Immigration Workshops Around the City of Los Angeles

This week I chose to examine the dataset about Immigration Workshops around the City of Los Angeles. Ontology refers to an organizational strategy for dividing information into data. In this dataset, information is given and sorted into categories that provide easy access to the community. The ontology of the dataset showcase the available workshops related to immigration information. The dataset first shows up as a calendar, with each blue box indicating the various locations where workshops will be held on each specific day. This provides people an idea that the information may be distributed by dates and time.

The categories for this dataset includes the following:

• Date of event: Month, day, and year workshop takes place.
• Organization: The type of organization hosting/facilitating the event.
• Site name: The name of the workshop site.
• Location: The full address description of the location including street name and number, city, state, zip code, and coordinates.
• Start Time: The time the workshop begins.
• End Time: The time the workshop ends.
• Languages: The languages available at the workshop.
• Notes: A (very) brief description of the topics the workshop will focus on/go over.
• Free: Indicates whether all
• Contact: Name, phone number, and/or email address to best contact in order to RSVP, make an appointment, or ask further questions.

I believe this ontology would be most useful and illuminating to individuals who are immigrants residing around Los Angeles. These individuals may find these workshops helpful when they are seeking citizenship or residency in the United States. There are also many locations that host monthly, some even weekly, workshops on immigration. This gives a bit of insight on the communities that have a large immigrant population who utilize and benefit greatly from these free workshops.

This ontology does a great job providing logistical details of the workshops held across Los Angeles, however there are areas of information that could be improved. For instance, it would be beneficial to include information on the actual people attending or are attending these workshops. Providing information about the demographics and immigration statuses of the immigrants who attend the workshop may help attendees feel more confident about attending certain workshops.

If I were to start over with the data-collection, from the perspective of an immigrant who is interested in attending these workshops, I would include more information in the text boxes on the calendar itself. Although knowing the location of the event can help me filter out locations that are not accessible to myself, it would be helpful to know the specific topics the workshop will delve into. I think it would be great to include information found in the “Notes” category in the text boxes on the calendar as well. Another option would be to have the information appear in a separate box if one were to hover over the location, similar to the bubble that appears when you hover over the information icon next to each category. This would give attendees more information without cluttering the calendar itself.