When systems fail
Total suggested time: 45 minutes
Class discussion: Fixing flawed systems
After students have listened to the podcast on their own, devote all or a portion of the next class to a guided discussion about the content, using all or some of the following questions in class.
FOR INSTRUCTORS: As you guide the discussion, try steering portions of the conversation from "understanding" questions to "evaluation" questions to build the complexity of students' learning.
‘Understanding’ questions
Suggested time: 15 minutes
- Why did the federal government collect data about COVID-19 the way it did?
- What data was missing?
- In what ways did data collection break down between states and the federal government?
- What potential flaws existed in data published by the COVID Tracking Project?
‘Application’ questions
Suggested time: 15 minutes
- What surprised you about the government’s methodology for tracking the spread of the coronavirus?
- How did the government’s systems for tracking COVID-19 compare to the systems you sketched in class?
‘Evaluation’ questions
Suggested time: 15 minutes
- How perfect does data have to be to be useful?
- How do the flaws in data collection of COVID-19 impact our understanding of the disease and its impact?
- As data journalists, how important is understanding the system – how data is collected – when reporting on what the data tells us?