Metaphors can Help Humanities Students Learn Data Analytics

Courses combining ai, data analytics, and humanities are increasing, offering new research opportunities in curriculum design and teaching methods. This paper examines how metaphors can help teach data analytics to humanities students, going beyond just cognitive benefits. To guide relevant research, I propose four overlapping areas of inquiry – representation, affect, production, and interaction. I then review key results from some of my recent studies that investigate i) the effects of different metaphor types on learner competencies and attitudes, ii) learners’ creative ability to transform data analytics concepts from metaphorical targets to sources, and iii) learners’ and teachers’ unconscious affective engagement with metaphor in an interactional setting. The studies employ different methodologies from classroom quasi-experiments to surveys, skin conductance analysis, and discourse analysis. While each study carries its own pedagogical implications, the synthesized conclusion is that metaphors can help humanities students – when we bear in mind their ‘Customizability’, ‘Agility’, and ‘Naturalness’.