Sport Informatics and Analytics/Capstone/Audiences and Messages

Audiences and messages

The fourth theme in this course considered the ways in which messages are shared with a range of audiences. We:

• Discussed augmented information in general and feedforward in particular.
• Explored the visualisation of data.
• Invited you to think about personal learning environments, and how you might use an ePortfolio to share your formative and summative reflections about the course and your own learning.

Our discussions about the visualisation of data included this quote from Maria Popova about "the intersection of art and algorithm":

Ultimately, data visualization is more than complex software or the prettying up of spreadsheets. It's not innovation for the sake of innovation. It's about the most ancient of social rituals: storytelling. It's about telling the story locked in the data differently, more engagingly, in a way that draws us in, makes our eyes open a little wider and our jaw drop ever so slightly. And as we process it, it can sometimes change our perspective altogether.

We noted the importance of storytelling in the sharing of sport analytics data. We included feedforward in our discussions and included a topic to explore the conceptual and practical implications of 'learning forward'.