Using Collaborative Visual Analytics for Innovative Industry-inspired Learning Activities
Abstract
Inspired by leading industry practices, this paper describes an innovative learning activity designed to combine data visualisation and cross-functional collaboration supported by enterprise social media. The activity is structured around sharing, co-creation and negotiation of departmental/disciplinary insights across data silos, using both internal and external data. In addition to giving students access to state-of-the-art tools for visualisation (SAS-VA) and collaboration (Yammer), an even more important educational objective is to expose students to the complexities of deriving information (i.e. meaning) from enterprise-wide (meaning-free) data stored by business intelligence & analytics systems. This human-driven and human-centric process of making sense of data in context requires collaboration across functional silos, especially when dealing with complex multi-disciplinary challenges. Starting from an industry-informed business scenario, the paper describes the main steps of an innovative data visualisation and collaboration activity, discusses possible alternative software platforms and offers some ideas for the future work.