Data literacy skills are no longer reserved for data scientists. Organizations today look for employees who can comprehend data, generate insights, and put it to actionable use for their business. But there’s a gap. According to a recent report by the Data Literacy Project and Qlik, only 21% of 16–24-year-olds are data literate. This suggests that schools and universities aren’t providing opportunities for students to gain the skills they need to enter the working world.
Business school programs can play a pivotal role in helping their students develop the technical prowess to wrangle data. Here are the three data literacy skills that every business school graduate should have in their skill set.
Analyzing and interpreting data:
Combing through sales data—transaction systems, customer interactions, and demographic data—to uncover trends and identify gaps can give sales teams a competitive edge.
Making data-driven business decisions:
Translating data into usable insights for a business—for developing new practices and driving decision-making—can give individuals in finance and operations roles a leg up.
Communicate data insights:
Telling data stories to different audiences effectively—visually and with words—is a valuable skill that helps individuals formulate and employ successful marketing strategies.
Help your business school students advance their careers by complementing their curriculum with skills training in data literacy. To learn more about the technical and professional skills your students need to succeed, download our ebook, “Preparing career-ready students.”
At technology-driven workplaces, employers expect employees to have a working knowledge of Microsoft Office programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Ensuring your students are taught how to use these programs will set them up for success when they enter the workforce.
Here’s how the Microsoft Office suite can arm your students with the technical skills they need to flourish in the real world.
Organizing data and insights with Excel
Not only should students be able to organize, analyze, manipulate, and present data within Microsoft Excel, they should be able to communicate their insights in a way that helps build a business’s competitive advantage.
Creating polished business documents in Word
There’s more to Microsoft Word than word processing. Business students can harness intuitive editing features, advanced formatting options, tables, lists, and sleek design elements to create documents and proposals.
Presenting ideas to a group with PowerPoint
Business school students are no strangers to PowerPoint. But understanding the ins and outs of the software can turn a basic slideshow into a dynamic presentation that lets their professional skills shine.
Staying connected and organized with Outlook
Whichever industries your students pursue, a solid grasp of Outlook is likely to come in very handy. The ability to manage emails, calendars, and tasks will help them stay organized and productive.
Support your students by helping them sharpen their technical skills in Microsoft Office. Discover more technical and professional skills your students need to succeed after business school in our ebook, “Preparing career-ready students.”
Dr. Steven D. Hoelscher, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, inspired Dr. Jessica (Jessie) Swigger to become a great teacher and author.
“Steve informed everything about how I approach my job,” Jessie, an associate professor of history at Western Carolina University, said about her inspirational professor.
Jessie first met Steve when she took his Memory and Place course at the University of Texas (UT), Austin. “The point of the course is to examine how members within different cultures and societies do certain things to remember a shared past as well as to forget a shared past,” explained Steve, a professor of American Studies.
“I was really inspired by that class,” Jessie recalled. “Steve was studying the kind of things that I was interested in.” His enthusiasm for the subject was infectious, and it sparked her interest in public history, the way history is put to work in the world in fields like museum curatorship and historic preservation. Jessie eventually decided to specialize in this area of American Studies, writing her dissertation on the history of Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village and choosing Steve as her advisor.
Initially, Jessie was a silent participant in Steve’s course. “I had a lot of trouble speaking up in classes,” she confided. “But he pushed me to enter the discussion in a really kind way. He would ask me just the right question to get me talking. That’s something I have yet to master in my classroom.”
Steve informed everything about how I approach my job.
— Jessica Swigger, Associate Professor
Describing his approach to encouraging class participation, Steve said, “I think a certain degree of empathy is necessary to be a good teacher. You need to try to place yourself in the shoes of the students, and to do that, you need to know them. Once you understand their perspective, you then try to draw out things that might otherwise just be unspoken.”
Jessie also credits Steve with helping her fine-tune her research skills. She fondly recalled going to office hours and talking to him about her ideas for different research projects. “They were such intellectually fruitful conversations that expanded how I was thinking about different problems,” she recalled. “He taught me how to do research—the way to think and how to read carefully and write. He would always give me such detailed feedback on my writing.”
“If professors are doing a good job, they offer critical feedback,” Steve noted. “And sometimes that can be kind of hard to receive. But Jessie was always interested in figuring out ways to do work better, and she worked really hard.”
When it came time for Jessie to look for a job, Steve was there to help. “When you are an advisor, you do more than just read the dissertation and give feedback,” Steve explained. “You write letters of recommendation. You look for jobs that might be suitable for the candidate. You suggest avenues for publication. And you talk about the difficult job market and the sort of things that one needs to do to prepare.”
Now in her fourteenth year of teaching, Jessie praised her inspirational professor by saying, “I want to be the kind of teacher that he is.”
In response, Steve said, “One doesn’t always hear that when you are a teacher or a professor. You go about your business and do the best job you can. So when you hear that you have been important in someone’s career, that means a lot, especially when it’s from someone whom I admire like Jessie.”
Biographies
Dr. Jessica Swigger is an associate professor of History and the director of Public History, at Western Carolina University. She is the author of “History is Bunk”: Assembling the Past at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village and is working on a book about the history of children’s’ museums in the United States. Jessie earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from the University of Texas, Austin.
Dr. Steven D. Hoelscher is a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, and the faculty curator at the Harry Ransom Center. He has published four books and over forty book chapters and articles. Steve has a doctorate of philosophy degree in geography from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
During the fifteen years that Dr. Keri Stephens has taught at the University of Texas, Austin, she has helped hundreds of students like Courtney Bagot develop communication skills that empower them to succeed in their careers. Courtney is now using those skills to fund meals for food-insecure families across North Texas.
“I did not plan on becoming a teacher, but when I was in graduate school, I had the opportunity to teach some classes,” Dr. Stephens explained. “I decided to keep teaching when I saw that my students were getting jobs based on the things that I had told them. I really felt like I could have a tremendous impact on young adults’ lives.”
One of those young adults was Courtney Bagot. Courtney now works for the North Texas Food Bank, managing partnerships with corporate donors. She uses skills that she learned during Dr. Stephens’ Organizational Communication course every day in her work.
Dr. Stephens hopes students who take her Organizational Communication courses learn questioning and listening skills. “I want to teach my students that having a communication background can help them navigate just about any organizational situation,” Dr. Stephens explained. “Things are not laid out cleanly for them, and they’re going to have to use their asking and answering skills. And it’s my hope that it empowers them to be good at no matter what they choose to do.”
In the course, Courtney developed her listening skills. “Listening is even more important than getting your message out because it enables you to really tailor and customize your message,” Courtney said. “That’s important in my current job because I’m not just selling our mission—I’m trying to help our partners understand what we are doing and apply it to their values.”
Courtney also learned how to network from Dr. Stephens. Courtney recalled, “She gave us tips on how to ask questions that helped us inspire more meaningful conversations in order to create relationships. And with my job, that’s exactly what I have to do. I have to build relationships with people so that they trust us and work with us.”
Using these skills, Courtney was able to help the North Texas Food Bank fund and distribute seventy million nutritious meals to food-insecure families across thirteen counties last year. Her efforts earned her a recent promotion to associate director of corporate engagement, a position that requires her to manage approximately seventy-five partner relationships.
Courtney attributes her success to what she learned from Dr. Stephens. “She taught me how to communicate with different types of people, and those basic principles helped me move up quickly in my job,” she explained.
She taught me how to communicate with different types of people, and those basic principles helped me move up quickly in my job.
— Courtney Bagot, Associate Director of Corporate Engagement
Learning of Courtney’s promotion, Dr. Stephens said, “I’m not surprised that she has moved ahead quickly because of how much she engaged in my class. Professors want to see their students succeed, and it makes us very happy when we hear that they’re doing great things.”
Biographies
Courtney Bagot earned her bachelor’s degree in Corporate Communication from the University of Texas, Austin. She spent a year working for a for-profit organization before deciding that something was missing from her life. Wanting to make a difference in the world and help those who are less fortunate, she applied for a job at the North Texas Food Bank. She has worked there for four-and-a-half years and was promoted in September 2016 to the position of associate director of corporate engagement.
Dr. Keri Stephens earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. After working in industry for a decade, she returned to school at the University of Texas, Austin, to pursue a PhD in Organizational Communication and Technology. As a graduate student, she had the opportunity to teach some classes, and fifteen years later, she is still teaching there as an associate professor. Dr. Stephens has published over fifty peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, and she recently received The President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award (only seven were given to faculty at UT Austin).
The Discovery Channel’s This is AI looks at how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world now, the scientists shaping it, and the lives affected by this nascent technology.
This is especially significant in the education industry with the increasing need for lifelong learning. The future of digital learning offers the potential of even greater tools and supports. Imagine lifelong learning companions powered by AI that can accompany and support individual learners throughout their studies – in and beyond school – or new forms of assessment that measure learning while it is taking place, shaping the learning experience in real time.
While the full potential of the application of AI is being discovered with each day, today there are students and educators benefitting from a new kind of personalized learning.
Mike Holcomb, a former Dean for Technology of the Arts at the University of Arizona, has had a long and illustrious career helping thousands of students, including Tara Johnson-Medinger, find their creative approach.
Tara met Mike while studying in the University of Oregon’s film program in the early 90s. Because the film degree was theory-heavy, she added a Fine Arts minor to take advantage of more production-based courses and get a broader arts perspective.
Tara enrolled in Mike’s motion graphics course, but not without some hesitation. She didn’t consider herself a fine artist, and at first she wasn’t sure that his year-long class was the best choice. Friends who had taken courses with Mike helped convince Tara to take the plunge, and before long she discovered the class was helping her find her artistic voice.
“Because I was struggling so much with learning the animation process and not being a good illustrator, there were moments of wanting to abandon it. Mike helped me out of that, and really made me think of what I was doing in a different way.”
Mike has long believed that the pressure to get things right the first time has a damaging effect on students in the arts, so his teaching style has always focused on embracing their mistakes. He’d always gained satisfaction from guiding students to those moments when they understand their capabilities and start believing in themselves, rather than simply learning by dictation and rote.
“She was apprehensive at first because she didn’t come from a fine arts background. She felt she didn’t have the necessary drawing skills. But there are so many other techniques that can be employed. So, one of my first jobs as a teacher of animation was to acquit her of that notion.”
I felt I had an ally and a friend that supported me. Mike helped me find my voice.
— Tara Johnson-Medinger, Director and Producer
When Tara started to take the lead, he saw the light bulb go on and interesting work develop.
“I remember him being excited when I was trying to figure out my approach, because it was something quite different than what the other students were doing.”
Tara recalls the realization that Mike helped her make: “It didn’t have to be the way everyone else was doing it. Go through the process, fail, try again, succeed — he seemed excited about what I was discovering as a student. Initially, I felt very intimidated in his class, but by the end I felt I had an ally and a friend that supported me. Mike helped me find my voice.”
Tara went on to found the Portland Oregon Women’s (POW) Film Festival and the POWGirls Educational Program, and she credits Mike’s approach with enabling her to do so. She also hopes to pass that approach on to students in the POWGirls workshops.
“I want to help them to appreciate their work and honor what they create, even if it’s not perfect. It’s okay to move through imperfection. Too many people get caught up in the perfection part of it, and just want to get to the end. I want to live through the process of my creations.”
And Mike has enjoyed watching Tara’s career flourish.
“It’s wonderful. Her success doesn’t surprise me a bit. She’s strong, determined, clear-headed, and tireless. I’m just so proud of her.”
Elaine Cohen is a professor of computer science at the University of Utah. She inspired Bruce Gooch to pick up the teaching baton and pass what he learned — and more — on to a whole new generation of students.
Bruce Gooch wasn’t your typical computer student. For starters, his background was in mathematics, and he had no idea how to code.
“I used to be an actuary, and, after a wildly unsuccessful job search, was looking for something new.”
He decided to go back to school for computer science. By his own admission, he looked more like an outlaw biker than a professor. But once he began studying with Elaine, preconceptions fell away and he found the space and support he needed to excel.
Elaine showed Bruce that coding could be creative. By giving him the responsibility and ownership to explore his ideas, he found the inspiration to make new leaps in the field. As he puts it, “Elaine took away the chains from my mind.”
Elaine recalls, “Bruce was always very inventive and creative. His whole dissertation was something quite innovative that let him do stuff that nobody had done before. He created beautiful work.”
Elaine took away the chains from my mind.
— Bruce Gooch, Founder, Expressive Computer Graphics
Bruce took this encouragement and ran with it, co-authoring a paper on the fundamental shading algorithms in computer science. Prior to the paper, there were only three such algorithms. “Now there’s a fourth,” says Bruce. “It’s called Gooch Shading.”
He even wrote and published the first book in the field of non-photorealistic rendering — an area he helped discover — while he was a grad student, and he has become one of its top voices.
“Elaine let me know that I could do something that I could barely imagine doing—this thing that students just don’t do. My book was published at the same time and by the same company as her book. Students aren’t supposed to do this stuff!”
Because she developed a trust and respect with Bruce, friendship grew between them.
“I think that’s part of being a mentor, coaching people to understand that they can cope with whatever life gives you. It’s not easy, but you can do it if you’re passionate enough about what you’re doing.”
Throughout her career, Elaine has watched her students go on to enjoy all kinds of success.“I consider my students my ‘professional children.’ And when they grow into being successful professionals, it feels good.”
Bruce is one of those “children.” Now at Texas A&M, he helps students learn to create games and computer animations. He gives his students the same encouragement that Elaine gave him, with the perspective and experience to back it up.
“I’ve started some companies, and I have software that’s with millions of users. That’s what I’m pushing as ‘possible’ with my students. You can start a company. You can deploy a product. You can do these things that 20 years ago no one could.”
And Bruce is quick to point out how he got where he is: “Elaine encouraged me to do my own thing. She gave me an extreme amount of confidence, and the ability to see possibilities I hadn’t seen before.”
Higher education is moving into a new phase when it comes to the power of technology in the classroom. More sophisticated learning tools are being developed, and they promise to fundamentally change how instructors teach and students learn. Such advances are being met with a mix of resistance and acceptance. Some educators worry that new technologies may diminish their role in the education process will eventually replace them, or that digital learning tools are too costly, or not necessary. Some are concerned about the amount of work involved with incorporating technology into their courses. Despite such uneasiness, a growing number of educators are adopting the tools and using them in innovative ways to enhance student learning.
Among other products, Learning Catalytics is an interactive student response tool that educators are using in classrooms and lecture halls to pose questions and poll students’ understanding real-time with graphical visualization. We are continuing to develop even more advanced learning tools, including technologies that can assess critical thinking skills and broaden tutorial capabilities.
According to higher education experts, many educators are turning to technology to enhance the learning experience, deliver improved outcomes, and to manage increasing class sizes and varying learning styles. They are selecting course materials that are available in digital format, and they’re using interactive tools to check students’ progress and mastery on assignments when completing course assignments. Many educators are redesigning coursework to blend online activities with classroom experiences. Some are sending texts and emails to nudge students to keep up with assignments, while others are recording and streaming lectures for students to view outside the classroom at their convenience, on a variety of mobile devices. A number of educators are even setting up labs where students can use sophisticated technology to conduct research.
For example, the college of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign two years ago unveiled its Illinois Digital Ecologies and Learning Laboratory (IDEALL) where students can set up technology–enhanced learning environments and then use technology to study the impact on learning. The lab features state-of-the-art equipment, including 360-degree audio- and video-recording systems, ceiling-mounted cameras, and 55-inch touch-screen tabletops. University researchers say the entire lab operates as a data-collection device to track learners’ interactions with technology. They use data analytics techniques to identify patterns and relationships among the learners’ movements, responses, discussions, and other actions to gain insight into their levels of engagement.
H. Chad Lane, an associate professor of educational psychology, says the high-tech lab is making a “huge difference” for student researchers, and is an energizing, popular, and much-sought-after resource.
Although students might be gravitating toward digital tools, many education technology experts say their use will not replace instructors. Digital learning, the experts say, makes educators better able to meet the students where they are technologically, better able to adapt lessons for varied learning styles, and better able to reach more students. Those benefits, the experts say, translate to stronger academic success, improved retention rates, and higher graduation rates.
“Students learn best when there is an available instructor because those personal interactions and relationships are a very essential part of the teaching and learning process,” says Barnes. “Technology is simply backing up the instructor because the instructor cannot be there at every moment for every student.”
Indeed, students can access digital coursework on their own schedule, anytime, anywhere, on their personal device of choice. Digital products also offer a flexibility and malleability that print books cannot. Electronic materials can be easily updated by publishers, and they can be integrated with other technologies to become even more adaptable. Interactive learning solutions typically present topics in small chunks, along with a video, audio, or other teaching aid. Students can highlight and take notes, and they test their knowledge before moving on to the next topic. The interactive capability helps students grasp the concepts, accounts for their different learning styles, allows them to work at their own pace, and pushes them to be more engaged in their studies—all while helping to reduce the cost of learning materials by as much as 70 percent.
The interactive capabilities also help the instructors by giving them a broader reach to connect with students, an opportunity to give feedback outside class, and the ability to adjust and optimize their instructional plans. Instructors can electronically observe what assignments have been completed, how long it takes students to do them, and how they score on the online quizzes. Educators can send notes to students, prompt them online, or modify a lecture, assignment, or coursework, if they see that students are not understanding a concept.
Professor Margaret Flemming has shared her enthusiasm for physiology with Jeramy Ware and hundreds of other students in the Austin Community College District.
“I don’t know that I’d be a nurse, much less working towards a master of science degree in nursing, without Professor Flemming,” said Jeramy, as he described his inspirational professor. Jeramy dropped out of high school over twenty years ago, but he returned to school and is now employed as a cardiac nurse at South Austin Medical Center.
He took Professor Flemming’s physiology course during his second semester at Austin Community College (ACC). “Everybody warns you that this is the hardest class you’re going to take, that this is the one they use to weed out all the people from going to nursing school,” Jeramy recalled. “I was a new back-to-school student, and I was terrified. But Professor Flemming inspires you, and the way she teaches just makes you love the subject.”
Jeramy credits Professor Flemming with helping him develop skills that enhanced his employability, in addition to teaching him how the body works. “She taught me to look for the cause, instead of just seeing the effect. And that’s how I diagnose patients.”
“She also taught me how to get through to people and how to teach them,” he said. If one approach didn’t work, Professor Flemming would try another. Jeramy uses this skill every day in his work as he trains new nurses or educates patients to prevent re-admission to the hospital.
Professor Flemming doesn’t give you answers, but she shows you how to find them, and that’s what serves you best in life.
— Jeramy Ware, RN
Professor Flemming has been teaching at ACC for fifteen years. “Most of the students that I work with at ACC are working really hard to pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” she said. “So many community college students are not your traditional four-year students. Many of them are returning after being out of school for a number of years, and many of them are first-generation college students. They just really inspire me.”
Professor Flemming strives to engage her students. “I just want to hook them,” she explained. “I want to get them excited about what they’re learning.”
She also wants to teach students how to problem-solve. “A lot of the content in our courses is readily accessible thanks to the Internet,” she explained. “But what to do with that information is the critical part: how to read a patient’s chart and determine what questions they should ask the patient or how to answer the patient’s questions. I teach my students to take their analytical skills forward into whatever they do.”
Professor Flemming remembers Jeramy as being a persistent student, and she is not surprised at how far he has progressed in his career. “If he didn’t make an A on an exam, he was in my office the next day asking questions,” she recalled. “Like so many of our students, Jeramy is remarkable. He has been working while going to school, and he and his wife have four kids. He is a self-starter and a non-quitter.”
Jeramy firmly believes that this inspirational professor improved not only his employability, but that of many other nurses. As a preceptor at the medical center, he trains many of Dr. Flemming’s former students. “Her students are the ones I love to work with when we hire new nurses,” he confided. “She inspired a generation of nurses. We’re all better because we took her class.”
Biographies
Jeramy Ware earned his associate’s degree in nursing from Austin Community College and his bachelor’s degree from Western Governors University (WGU). He is a cardiac nurse at South Austin Medical Center and is working on his master of science degree in nursing at WGU. His goal is to teach nursing students.
Margaret Flemming has a master of science degree in veterinary physiology from Texas A&M University. She started teaching biology as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College in 2001 and became a full-time professor in 2006. Prior to her work at ACC, she was a horse trainer, riding instructor, and competitive rider.
