POLI-LIT

POLI LIT: Political Science Data Literacy Module

Project Leads: Edwina Chih-Yu Chen & Insu Hwang

Supported by the Center for Teaching Excellence  GTA/TA Teaching Resource Development Grant (USC)

POLI-LIT is an ongoing teaching innovation project designed to integrate data literacy, research methods, and AI-assisted learning into political science education. We piloted this module in POLI 101: Introduction to Global Politics (University of South Carolina, Fall 2025) with approximately 80 students. The module is designed for introductory-level courses but is adaptable for other political science and social science courses.

The module combines one in-person lecture with three online, self-paced units, each completion-based. It introduces students to data commonly used in political science research and develops their ability to interpret and visualize information responsibly, with the support of generative AI tools.

Module Overview (v1.2):

• Pre-Unit Lecture: Introduction to political research methods, conceptualization and measurement, and how political scientists use data and indices.

• Unit 1 — Data Literacy: Understanding datasets and codebooks, ethical data use, and basic statistical concepts such as distributions.

• Unit 2 — R Basics: Getting started with R (Posit Cloud), learning R fundamentals, and creating basic visualizations using ggplot2.

• Unit 3 — Data Visualization and AI: Using generative AI tools for coding support, exploring different chart types, and completing a small visualization project.

All datasets, readings, and materials are created for teaching purposes. We plan to continue improving and updating the module over time.

License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt this material for non-commercial purposes, provided you give appropriate credit and distribute any adaptations under the same license. If you would like to use these materials in ways not covered by this license, please contact us.

For collaboration, feedback, or full teaching materials package requests, please contact chihyu@email.sc.edu.

Explore the Module through link below ⬇️