Third edition of “Infographics and Data Visualization” starts with more than 3,300 students

“Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization,” the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas’ successful Massive Open Online Course (or MOOC), began its third edition this Monday with more than 3,300 participants in 139 countries.

Instructor Alberto Cairo, a world-renowned expert and a professor of the professional practice at the School of Communication of the University of Miami, is teaching the four-week course in English. It began on Oct. 6 and will conclude on Nov. 2.

The course is still open to the public, click here to register. Just like all of the Knight Center’s MOOCs, the course will be available for free to anyone in the world with an internet connection.

The country with most participants was the United States with 928 students, followed by Spain with 179, Brazil with 168. the United Kingdom with 153, India with 125, Canada with 90, Ukraine with 88, Mexico with 79 and the Netherlands with 77.

The course also attracted students from Belgium, Colombia, Cuba, China, Korea, Ireland, Jordan, Luxemburg, Norway, Peru, Senegal, Slovenia, Venezuela and several other countries.

Cairo is currently teaches at the University of Miami’s School of Communication and has taught several regular online courses on the Knight Center’s distance learning platform. Chapters of Cairo’s book, The Functional Art, are used in the course. He will also use his Twitter account @AlbertoCairo to complement class discussions.

Cairo’s “Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization” was the first course that the Knight Center offered through its MOOC program, which launched in October 2012 and quickly became a pioneer in massive journalism online education. As opposed to most MOOCs, which are just videos of regular college classes and reading materials, the Knight Center’s courses are created specifically for this massive format and seek to encourage the largest amount of student-to-student and instructor-to-students interactions as possible.

The first edition of “Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization” attracted more than 2,000 students and was so well received that the Knight Center offered a second, identical course last January. The course attracted more than 5,000 students in 133 countries, the Knight Center’s largest class to date.

Just like previous versions, the third edition of “Introduction to Infographics” will focus on how to work with graphics to communicate and analyze data. Previous experience in information graphics and visualization is not needed to take this course. With the readings, video lectures and tutorials available, participants will acquire enough skills to start producing compelling, simple infographics almost immediately. Participants can expect to spend 4-6 hours per week on the course.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas was created in 2002 by Professor Rosental Alves, who holds the Knight Chair in Journalism and the UNESCO Chair in Communication at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism. Launched with major, multi-year grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Center also has received grants from Open Society Foundations and other donors. The Knight Center also has been sustained with support from the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Communication, modest foundation grants and the public.