Created as part of WRTG 3035: Technical Communication and Design (Fall 2023, taught by Nathan Pieplow at the University of Colorado Boulder)
This student work was created in a Fall 2023 upper-division writing course called “Advocating with Data.” It was drafted in stages and workshopped with feedback from peers and the instructor. The assignment prompts can be found in the Toolkit:
Dataset Documentation Assignment Sequence
The dataset this document is analyzing can be found here: https://coepht.colorado.gov/air-quality-data
In keeping with the call for rich dataset documentation issued by Timnit Gebru et al. in "Datasheets for Datasets," this student sample provides not only technical documentation of an air quality dataset, but also a detailed data biography and an ethnographic assessment of the broader context to which this data collection effort belongs.
Caption: A preview of the AirQuality 2018 dataset documentation that students produced, specifically with links to the dataset the project is analyzing, a summary of the project, keywords, and a paragraph about other purposes the dataset could be used for.