Earlier work in education, media, and public data

Before the Digital Sidewalk study, I worked on education data, learning materials, and media analysis. These projects addressed different questions, but they required the same practical discipline: understand the source material well enough to make it useful to someone else.

Following language students through the education system

From 2021 to 2023 I served as sponsor project lead for a partnership between the University of Utah's Second Language Teaching and Research Center and the MSIS Capstone Program at the David Eccles School of Business. Capstone teams developed visualizations for the Bridge Language Program, which connects Utah's K–12 dual-language immersion pathway with university study.

My role included defining the questions, organizing statewide enrollment data, and communicating the results to program directors. The university's 2022 and 2023 accounts document the collaboration. They also identify the division of work: I led the sponsor-side project, and the student teams developed the platforms.

Making learning materials from existing resources

A 2023 Central States Communication Association presentation examined how openly licensed educational resources and free software could support multicultural learning materials. Finding a useful resource was only part of the work. Its source, license, and suitability for a particular audience also had to be recorded.

Other presentations in 2021 addressed media and governance, The Hunger Games, and instructional video for dual-language teaching. They belong to the Lab's history as separate pieces of communication research, rather than as evidence that every earlier project was designed for today's platform.

The relevance to the current map is practical. A dataset needs its institutional context, and a reusable media item needs a clear source and permitted use. Those concerns now appear in the Lab's observation records.