Designing a data warehousing and business analytics course using experiential learning pedagogy

• Main Authors: GOTTIPATI Swapna, SHANKARARAMAN, Venky
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: Experiential Learning; Course Design; Pedagogy; Data Warehousing; Business Analytics; Higher Education
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/3401
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Experiential learning refersto learning from experience or learning by doing. Universities have exploredvarious forms for implementing experiential learning such as apprenticeships,internships, cooperative education, practicums, service learning, jobshadowing, fellowships and community activities. However, very little has been done insystematically trying to integrate experiential learning to the main streamacademic curriculum. Over the last two years, at the authors’ university, a newprogram titled UNI-X was launched to achieve this. Combining academic curriculumwith experiential learning pedagogy, provides a challenging environment forstudents to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle real worldproblems and issues through inter-disciplinary approaches and activities. A coursedesignated as UNI-X involves external partners from corporate, non-profit orgovernment-sector organisations. The course requires the student to learnknowledge and skills during the classroom sessions and then to apply them insolving a real-world project proposed by the partners. The instructor alongwith the industry partner plays an active role in the project design, mentoringand assessment. In this paper contribution, the authors share their experience indesigning a Data Warehousing and Business Analytics (DWBA) course to includeexperiential learning activities. The paper describes in detail the content,pedagogy, in-course project, challenges and lessons learned when introducing experientiallearning into an existing course. Thus providing one pathway for Information Systems(IS) professors to adapt their analytics course to include experientiallearning activities.