Reading Like a Computer

Overview

NYUAD’s Core Curriculum is designed to encourage students and faculty to think across and between disciplines, to pursue big questions from diverse perspectives, and with respect to 21st-century global challenges. This also means that we need to learn to work with information and write in different ways.

The class will require you to be hands on about your learning. There will be lectures, discussions as well as guided exercises. In discussion and writing you will have the opportunity to share critical ideas and opinions about the material.

Over the semester we will try out different digital environments and experiment with common practices in digital culture–from the easy to the less easy–to explore spatial data and its relationship to society and to documents from the human record. In so doing, we will be experimenting with different forms of data creation, manipulation, visualization and storytelling.

Some baseline things we will do in the course include: building a site to host your work, working with computational notebooks, discussing the various materials of the course, and engaging with data and technology and writing about it critically.

Core Program Learning Outcomes

The Fall 2026 version of the course is offered as a Data and Discovery course in NYUAD’s Core Curriculum.

The Core Curriculum Program Learning Outcomes are to

  1. Critically examine historical and contemporary topics of global significance, which includes formulating clear, precise questions and arriving at well-reasoned conclusions using a. qualitative, b. quantitative, c. contextual, and d. creative modes of reasoning; (CLO 1, 2, 3, 7)

  2. Communicate effectively for various audiences and purposes, including participation in public settings; (CLO 2, 3, 5, 7)

  3. Demonstrate self-understanding and intercultural competency; (CLO 4, 6)

  4. Identify and reflect critically on conceptual and ethical complexity. (CLO 4, 8)

Course Learning Outcomes

Our Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) are listed below. They map onto to the Core Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) as indicated in the table.

DHS CLO Core PLO
1 Explore representations of human culture in digital, geographic space 1
2 Gain important data literacy skills, such as creating and manipulating data as well as data management strategies, including ones assisted by machine intelligence 1, 2
3 Compare community-based, open data initiatives with commercial, proprietary ones, reflecting on ethics, access and global data gaps 1, 2
4 Acquire strategies for integrating data and mapping into their own writing and research 3
5 Participate collaboratively in project-based research 2
6 Practice effective communication skills in a written research blog and in multi-modal spatial storytelling 3
7 Explore the ways that location-based technologies are rapidly evolving around them and both the creative possibilities and ethical concerns they raise 1, 2