Jason Davidson transcript

My name is Jason Davidson. I’m an assistant professor of business technology and analytics at Butler University. Go Dogs. I teach all things data analytics, from predictive analytics to Python to business intelligence, and of course Excel.

I have the fortune of being a Pearson author on the Exploring series. Specifically, I work on Exploring Excel Comprehensive. So, the biggest challenge that I face when introducing students to Excel in a new class is confidence. Excel is not a program that one would use for recreation. It’s very much a popular business tool.

So, when I meet students for the first time, they are a little bit intimidated from a math perspective, the fact that it uses some kind of magical formula or function or equation that they’ve never seen. And it’s not something that you can very quickly Google and get the answers for.

There are a lot of ways to overcome that and I hope that Exploring helps. What makes the Exploring series unique is the emphasis on experiential learning. We really want the students to dig deeper than just a surface-level understanding. We want them to truly master what you can do in Excel to immediately gain actual insights that will help them advance their career, their business, and live their dreams.

So my two favorite digital assets associated with the Exploring series have to be MyLab Sims and MyLab Graders, two very unique learning tools that I’ve learned to rely on in the classroom. So, what I like about The Sims is it’s a simulated environment that is stress-free for the students. It’s got built-in learning aids. The students can work at their own pace and they get immediate feedback, which I find students really, really respond well to.

As we progress through the learning experience and students gain confidence, I’d like to supplement these Sims with a Grader application. Graders are different because it forces the students to work in the real environment of Excel. So, they have to work on a local host on their own machine, not in a simulated environment, which is what they’d have to do in the real world. So, the students would download the assignment, work on their own pace.

They don’t get the immediate feedback that the simulator gives, and they get the ultimate feedback when they get scored on the end when they submit in the Grader. So, two different tools, really great thing that you can use to sort of build upon as the students gain confidence and progress through your course.

AI literacy has become so important in the current academic landscape and we stress that our students not only use AI ethically, they use it efficiently and they need to understand when they can, when they should and when they shouldn’t use AI in their tools. Copilot premium that you would need in order to truly integrate into Excel gives you both chat mode and ask skills mode, but those modes together can really unlock powerful insights and can help students overcome challenges or errors that might cost hours of time to look up.

And what we do is we stress to students, hey, use that tool not as a replacement for you, but use that tool to help you be a better version of yourself. Learn from it. Let it help you, but don’t let it replace work that you should be generating on your own.

As an educator, what keeps me motivated is watching students grow to be the best versions of themselves. I really love helping students find the confidence to excel and go into the workplace and immediately make a difference on day one.