Teaching with NYC Open Data: Publishing Student Civic Research Through Reproducible Workflows

This session showcases the Brooklyn College Open Data Student Gallery, a publicly available resource featuring original civic research projects conducted by graduate students at Brooklyn College. Developed as part of a reproducible research curriculum, students used real NYC Open Data datasets to investigate questions that mattered to them — from public safety and housing trends to environmental and social issues affecting New Yorkers. Using R, Quarto, and the open-source nycOpenData package, each student produced a fully reproducible research chapter that is now published as part of an open educational resource. The gallery can be explored here:
https://martinezc1-nyc-open-data-student-gallery.share.connect.posit.cloud/.

The session will begin with a brief overview of how NYC Open Data was integrated into the classroom and how students moved from research question to public-facing publication. The majority of the session will feature short lightning talks from participating students, each presenting their project, dataset, analysis approach, and key findings. Attendees will gain insight into how real civic datasets can be used in higher education to build technical skills, critical thinking, and meaningful public scholarship.

This session is ideal for educators, civic technologists, students, and anyone interested in public data, reproducible research, or innovative teaching approaches. Participants will leave with concrete ideas for incorporating NYC Open Data into their own classrooms or projects — and examples of how student work can move beyond traditional assignments to become lasting, shareable contributions to the civic data ecosystem.