Design and Delivery of Technical Module for the Business Intelligence Course

Abstract

IS programs are increasingly being called on to offer courses in business intelligence. This article presents the pedagogical design and the delivery method of a practicable technical module for a non-technically oriented Business Intelligence course. It is a tutorial for the instructors who wish to incorporate a practical technical element in their business-oriented Business Intelligence courses. The subject of the technical module discussed in this article is OLAP (Online Analytical Process). OLAP is the most commonly used technique of business intelligence but tends to be underemphasized in the existing textbooks and the pedagogy literature. The technical module of our Business Intelligence course covers four important parts: (1) a framework of OLAP strategy for business intelligence; (2) a guideline of OLAP practices in the Microsoft Office environment; (3) a set of elemental OLAP techniques including query, OLAP cube operations, statistical analysis, and data visualization; and (4) a technical assignment of OLAP. Our preliminary student feedback has indicated the usefulness of this technical module.