As we all get settled into a new terms teaching, meeting this years students and welcoming back those who are progressing, the BAEF is pleased to announce an interesting and highly relevant talk. Save the date: Tuesday 30th September 5pm to 6pm (BST) From Grid to Dialogue: Unlocking the Value of a 2x2 Matrix in a Business Analytics Classroom Presented by David Sammon Brief Description of the Session The humble 2x2 matrix is more than just a visual aid, it's a powerful teaching artefact that can spark dialogue, surface tensions, and scaffold complex thinking in the Business Analytics classroom. In this talk, I will share my experience designing and using 2x2 matrices to promote analytical thinking and reflective practice across undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education contexts. I will introduce four original matrices that emerged from practice and scholarly engagement, including: the BIG DATA Matrix, the Analytics Strategy Design Matrix, the Problem Validation Matrix, an...

  Today’s blog is all about how to design and create a business analytics programme at a university,  Dr Salimeh Mohammad kindly offered to share her experiences of designing a Business Analytics and Data Science programme at Warwick Business School in the United Kingdom.   Salimeh is an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School, and she gave us a live talk about her approach to designing the curriculum, the course contents, teaching methods, and student support.    A recording of the talk is available on our YouTube Channel  . .   In the following article Dr Chris Davies from Bangor Business School has summarised Salimeh's talk, boiling down all of those tips and tricks we might find useful.   So, if you’re an academic who is also designing a business analytics program this talk is for you.   The first step in designing the programme is to have a clear definition of what analytics, and thus business analytics, is.   Sal...

The next BAEF session is going to be of interest to a wide audience with a subject close to many of our hearts, essay mill cheating. Our speaker, Phil Rothwell (Teaching and Learning Academy, LJMU), will outline how Canvas data can be a powerful tool for the analysis and enhancement of student engagement, system development, and teaching, learning and assessment. In this case, it also proved to be a powerful aid to police investigation. Phil will tell the story of how Canvas data was used to initiate and support an investigation into an essay and exam mill that was operating across multiple international borders and involving over 25 UK HEIs and more than 500 students. The investigation ultimately led to the seizure of millions of pounds. The presentation will explore how simple data forensics and triangulation techniques were used in partnership with Merseyside Police to help bring an end to large-scale fraud and misconduct. This was enacted via the implementation of the Skills and ...

  Greetings educators Apologies for the radio silence we have been busy behind the scenes lining up some interesting events for this year and to kick things off we have a visit from KNIME.   Save the date: Monday 24th March 5pm to 6pm Presented by Dr Stefan Helfrich   Brief Description of the Session   In this workshop, participants will learn about the basics of the low-code KNIME Analytics Platform and how they can use it to include visual workflows in their teaching. We will create a simple workflow to familiarize attendees with KNIME, followed by a more comprehensive tour of the platform highlighting the advantages of using KNIME for teaching data-related topics in educational settings. Lastly, we'll dive into a more elaborate use case featuring an interactive data app to showcase practical ap...

  This article is a shortened version of one that first appeared in the ICAEW blog in 2023  https://www.icaew.com/groups-and-networks/communities/data-analytics-community/community-insights-and-announcements Human Centric Analytics (HCA) would seem a natural paradigm to use when defining, measuring, and reporting on Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) as it ties together a holistic societal approach in tackling social and environmental sustainability, and the need for reporting and measuring the levers of change in business. What methods can we use to help us to do this? How can we ensure that behaviours are embedded alongside measurement protocols such that change becomes real, and not just a ‘tick box’ exercise, hence creating more sustainable and less risky business throughout the corporate landscape? In this months blog our founder and chair, Christina Phillips, ponders these questions. As Eli Goldratt famously said “tell me how you measure me and I’ll tell you h...

This month we are proud to present a thoughtful blog post from one of early members, Dr Sam Buxton. Sam's words resonate with our presentation earlier this year on what business analytics skills companies want and what tools they use. That talk covered the results of a survey that we ran with over 200 participants. The results showed that companies most value the ability to use spreadsheets, i.e., Excel, a solid knowledge of statistics and the ability to visualise and present data well.  Best, Chris, Chair of BAEF  As an educator of business analytics, it is important to consider the environment in which we teach. Over the summer, there have been some interesting talks on AI in education, embedding business analytics in accounting programmes and what skills and tools do companies require of business analysts. This post focuses on students’ perspectives of the tools they think they need. Teaching business analytics to non-specialists at both undergraduate and master’s levels ...

Presented by one of our board members Dr Marios Kremantzis Brief Description of the Session Marios sits on the organising committee at the BAEF and is Chair of the Operational Research Society’s OR-Analytics-Education Special Interest Group. In this session he will present current work related to two highly quantitative units that adopted Chatbot as a teaching assistant: Prescriptive Analytics as part of the MSc Business Analytics, and Mathematics for Economists, for BSc Economics students. This highly prescient subject promises to be an informative and enjoyable session with other colleagues dedicated to teaching Business Analytics well. Profile: Marios Kremantzis is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Business Analytics at the University of Bristol, where he also serves as the Program Director of the MSc Business Analytics and as Senior PGT Tutor. Additionally, he is the Co-Editor in Chief of the open-access journal Intelligent Technologies in Education (ITEd). With a PhD in Manageme...

  14th August 2024, between 4.30 and 5.30pm Dr Grigorios Theodosopoulos Brief Description of the Session   Grigorios was one of the founding members of the BAEF back in 2021 and at the time expressed an interest in building this community to help him create an MSc in Accounting that proposed to use Business Analytics/Intelligence for the first time. We are fortunate to host him now as he draw on his experience of designing Brunel’s MSc in Accounting and Business Intelligence, to present how things have worked for students and colleagues, after the programme has been delivered for the first time. We will hear about the   “Motivations and Challenges of Embedding and Delivering Business Analytics in an Accounting Postgraduate Programme”   Profile: Grigorios  is a Reader (Associate Professor) in accounting and a member of the Accounting and Auditing Research Group at Brunel Business School since 2012. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Certified ...

Today we will be looking at a BAEF webinar focusing on the types of analytics that companies are using today and the kinds of skills that they require from their analysts.  The webinar was live streamed on the 24 th June 2024 and presented a study by Dr Christina Phillips and a Master’s student that she supervised.  Zhuoyi Deng started off by giving an account of what the study was about and then onto its main findings.   The study started off as a project to investigate what companies are doing in terms of their analytics and the type of skill sets that they would like to see in their analysts.   This is from a background of massive amounts of data being generated every day (some 2.5 quintillion bytes a day!) and how some 90% of the worlds current data was generated within the last two years.   This has placed a demand from companies for analysts who are able to make sense of all this information (it is estimated that this will translate into some 300K new p...

  We are proud to announce our summer seminars coming up on 24th June 2024, between 12 and 1pm, Lunchtime session “What Analytics Tools do Companies Use and What Skills do They Require” 14th August 4.30 to 5.30pm, Early evening session “Motivations and Challenges of Embedding and Delivering Business Analytics in an Accounting Postgraduate Programme”   We do hope you will be able to join us for these highly informative and useful events.   First up our Chair, Dr Christina J Phillips and Ms Zhuoyi Deng MSc 24th June 2024, between 12 and 1pm Brief Description of the Session   Back in 2018 Jia Woh, a student at University of Leeds Business School began a QSteps funded project with Christina. The project was designed to look at  ‘What Analytics Tools do Companies Use and What Skills do They Require’   and Jia began this by interviewing 7 company leaders and covering the current literature to develop a questionnaire.   Zoom forward 5 years and the project wa...

This time round we are going to be looking directly at the planning and execution of a successful Business Analytics programme with an active BAEF member who has implemented multiple programmes and has some great tips and tricks up her sleeve that could help you in your planning and delivery.  Dr  Salimeh Pour Mohammad   is an Associate Professor and Curriculum Designer in Business Analytics at the University of Warwick Business School. Before joining WBS, she was a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of MSc Business Analytics at the University of Exeter Business School. She was also a member of the University-Wide Data Science Education Committee as well as the Accreditations and Ranking group at Exeter. Prior to that, Salimeh has worked as a lecturer for UG and PG programs at the University of West London Business School where she led management courses on four international campuses (UAE, China, Cyprus and London) from the London campus. Before that Salimeh has work...