ISECON 2014: Baltimore, MD

November 6-8, 2014

Experiential Learning using QlikView

Business Intelligence Software

RJ Podeschi, Assistant Professor of Information Systems

Millikin University | Decatur, Illinois
rpodeschi@millikin.edu
Twitter: @rpodeschi

About Millikin University

Located in Central IL
Private, Liberal Arts Institution
Approx. 1900 students
4 Colleges
Arts & Sciences
Business
Fine Arts
Professional Studies
Graduate programs
MBA
Nursing

Information Systems Major

Housed within the business school
Approximately 40 majors and 10 minors

Business Intelligence Course

Information Systems elective
Offered the previous 2 springs
10 and 7 students respectively

Pre-requisite course: Foundations of I.S.

All students had previously taken Database
course
Data modeling
SQL
Various platforms (MySQL, Oracle, Access)

Business Intelligence Course Objectives

Understand the strategic importance of Business
Intelligence and data analytics.
Design and develop a data warehouse based on data
needs and user requirements.
Extract, transform, and load operational data into a data
warehouse.
Build a Business Intelligence application for
Dashboarding, Analysis, and Reporting.
Practice system design architecture and concepts.
Interpret data into informed decisions for
recommendation.
Collaborate with a third-party client in teams to support
organizational data needs.

The Need for Business Intelligence

Business leaders need BI for quick-and-easy

access to information, to make timely and
accurate decisions (Mrdalj, 2007).
[Students] need to understand how data is
stored and be able to access and analyze it
using a variety of tools (Watson, 2008).

Issues with BI Software

Teaching resources & support
Lack of data sets, cases, text, BI software
training
Lack of real-world business problems

Issues with BI Software

Complex installation requirements

Require server infrastructure
Require maintenance
Steep learning curve

Examples: Oracle Business Intelligence, IBM

Cognos

QlikView for Business Intelligence

Encourages users to follow the information
scent through visualizations
Uses real-time ad-hoc querying in-memory
Supports connection to various data sources:
Excel, Access, csv, Oracle, MySQL, etc.

Desktop platform
Academic program support
Free online training

An Associative Experience
Text

Executive Dashboard

QlikView Load Script

QlikView Requirements

Windows 7/8 32/64 bit

Quick installation
Free trial available qlikview.com
Free academic program
Online training
Online faculty community

Using Airline Data with QlikView

Obtain commercial airline data online

Model the data in a data warehouse
Construct dashboards
Analyze and report results

Better prepare students to hit the ground

running through real-world business problems
(Wixom et. al 2014).

Skills Practiced

Data modeling for data warehouses

Extract, Transform, Load process
Handling large data sets (1 million rows +)
Wrestle with data quality issues
Building a user-friendly application
Data analysis and interpretation

Hard to find a good mix of technical and

business skills (Wixom, 2011)

Experiential Learning
Provided concrete experience, abstract
conceptualization, active experimentation,
and reflection (Kolb, 1984)

Students had to wrestle with uncertainty. It

wasnt prescribed.
Incorporated peer review

Student Feedback
it helped me understand that it was I.T.s job
to build and model data so that others in the
company can make better decisions.

the developer has the opportunity to make

the data say what [he/she] wants. It
reinforced the need for me to be unbiased
and think about how I wanted to display the
data.

Student Feedback
learned that it was more efficient to transform
data in QlikView as opposed to other wellknown tools like Microsoft Excel and Access.

Conclusions
QlikView is a no-cost, low-learning curve
software package that allowed students to:

Practice data warehouse skills

Build ad-hoc query applications
Practice data analysis
Build skills based on real data

Whats Next?
Are these valuable skills that span beyond
the information systems major?
Can QlikView be delivered to business
students who are not studying information
systems?
What would the format of the course look like
and how would the learning objectives
change?

Thank you for your time.

What are your questions?

RJ Podeschi
Assistant Professor of Information Systems
Millikin University | Decatur, IL
rpodeschi@millikin.edu
Twitter: @rpodeschi