Lamar University Teaches Tableau in MIS Program for Data Visualization Best Practices
Dr. Kakoli Bandyopadhyay has been teaching with Tableau since 2009. Her specialty and background is in management information systems. Dr. Bandyopadhyay began including Tableau in her teaching curriculum, in order to introduce data visualization to her business intelligence students. Her courses aim to “expose students to business intelligence which is defined as the user-centered process of exploring data, data relationships and trends - thereby helping to improve overall decision making. This involves an iterative process of accessing data and analyzing it- thereby deriving insights, drawing conclusions and communicating findings, to effect change positively within the enterprise.” Dr. Bandyopadhyay’s pedagogical methods include webinars which can be found here and here.
Main learning objectives:
- To understand the purpose of, and learn how to leverage data visualization
- To reach proficiency in Tableau
Can you tell us how you used Tableau in your course?
I created three assignments to take students step-by-step for learning Tableau. The assignments help students learn the Tableau tools, as well as how visualization can be used to explore and find new insight. The assignments also utilized the sample dataset included when downloading Tableau (coffee chain and superstore).
Why did you choose to use Tableau?
I wanted to teach my students data visualization in my BI courses.
How did you learn Tableau?
By attending live webinars and using the educational on-demand videos available on the Tableau website.
How did you teach Tableau to your students?
By providing my students with video webinars and assignments on how to work with Tableau (see above to link to video and click here to access all three assignments).
What were the biggest challenges in teaching Tableau?
No challenges.
What type of feedback did you receive from your students?
They simply love the software.
They (the students) simply love the software.