FIAP—located in São Paulo, Brazil—specializes in the area of Informatics. Popular courses include computer engineering, information systems, and business intelligence (BI). Professor of BI, Danilo Vasconcelos de Souza shares how students use Tableau in their coursework. Within the first class, students understand how to ask smart business questions and answer them with data. After students use Tableau in the business intelligence course, they continue to use it in other disciplines—and bring it their jobs once they graduate.
Tableau: Tell us about your MBA course. Danilo Vasconcelos de Souza, Professor, FIAP - Faculdade de Tecnologia: I am the professor of the MBA course on BI (Business Intelligence), specifically for technology and big data, which is a new course that we are working on in Brazil. I have a hands-on method for teaching Tableau. In the first lesson, I talk about some of the history, explain the goal, explain why merging a database with computer graphics and human interface is so important. Tableau: Why did you choose Tableau for your course? Danilo: With Tableau drag and drop, when I have a business problem, I ask a question and it answers me with a chart. It´s perfect. In the first class, students are already able to develop this.
What I try to do is to merge theory with practice, and Tableau enables me to do that, without needing much knowledge or preparation time.
Tableau: How do you incorporate data storytelling? Danilo: As a final piece of work, I usually request a storytelling, where I ask them to search for information that is relative to and adds value to Brazilian society. And so they construct a storytelling. They set some parameters, which need to have at least two dashboards, some explanatory views, other exploratory views—and they concatenate all of this into a story. Tableau: How do students react when they use Tableau? Danilo: I really see that they want to use Tableau in other disciplines, they want to use Tableau in the course completion work, in the final work. They want to take Tableau to the company they work for. Practical examples where you bring a business need, and that business need is resolved using Tableau—I have no words to express how perfect it is for the students. Tableau: How has Tableau impacted your course? What are your plans for the future? Danilo: What I try to do is to merge theory with practice, and Tableau enables me to do that, without needing much knowledge or preparation time. Now, with the use of Tableau, in the last two years, I have felt that every day they like the course more and more. They love to interact with the course. I realize that the course has gained more fans, students are more excited to understand new things, and now I intend to add Vizable to the course. I can see it in my results, I can see it in the polls and in how much the students have enjoyed the course.