Data Storytelling Studio: Climate Change
MIT's Comparative Media Studies program offers this studio course on turning complex datasets into visual narratives, using climate change data as the working material. Students learn methods for researching, cleaning, and analyzing datasets, then move into visualization techniques for presenting that data clearly and persuasively. Sessions cover the emotional, aesthetic, ethical, and practical tradeoffs of different presentation choices, and how to build metrics for judging whether a visualization actually communicates its point. Coursework includes assigned readings, hands-on visualization exercises, and a final project where students design their own data story from raw numbers to finished piece. Materials are published through MIT OpenCourseWare under a Creative Commons license, with no instructor feedback or certificate, just the syllabus, assignments, and readings for self-directed study.