In Summary

  • Swinburne and Tableau will co-design the business analytics and visualisation unit
  • Tableau is an international leading data analytics platform
  • The unit will teach students the skills to engage in self-service analytics

Swinburne has partnered with leading analytics platform, Tableau, to co-design Swinburne’s Master of Digital Business Management.

Delivered by the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship (AGSE), this unit partnership continues to build on the AGSE’s long-standing practice of engaging with industry to create courses that reflect current market trends and technological innovations.

Tableau is collaborating with Swinburne to design and teach the Business Analytics and Visualisation unit, providing industry-relevant insight and tools for students.

Director of the Master of Digital Business Management, Dr Paul Scifleet, says this partnership will facilitate teaching postgraduate business students how to use tools that open them up to the world of self-service data analytics.

“At the moment, data science is seen as inaccessible. By collaborating with Tableau, we are shifting this view,” Dr Scifleet says.

“As leaders of digital change, our graduates will know how to ask the right questions of data to better inform the decisions they make to address current, real-world and applied business needs.”

Preparing the workforce of tomorrow

Tableau ANZ Country Manager, Nigel Mendonca, says the analytics company is thrilled to join forces with Swinburne in its first postgraduate studies partnership.

“We look forward to working with Swinburne to empower more Australians with analytics skills to make rapid, insightful decisions at a time where the growth in data is exploding and will continue to do so in the years ahead,” Mr Mendonca says.

“The demand for talent with data literacy skills continues to rise in Australia, and with severe shortages in this area there is a burning need to look at ways to narrow this gap. Collaboration between the government, private sector and educators is essential to up-skill the workforce of today and embed data literacy in the workforce of tomorrow.”

Dr Scifleet says the substantial level of co-design with Tableau will set students up to have an edge over competing graduates.

“In a short period of time, we take students who know little about data analytics and teach them how to interpret and analyse data using Tableau software.”

“Tableau provides expertise on what its tools can do, bringing skilled users into the classroom to demonstrate not only how to use the software, but how impactful this understanding of data can be in solving business problems.”

The future applications of data analytics

Having a sound understanding of data analytics will place graduates at the cutting edge of its future applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI).

According to Dr Scifleet, a lot of AI is being driven by the data underneath it, with many companies using AI and data analytics to improve occupational health and safety, customer experience and to inform marketing campaigns.

“Knowledge of data serves a huge range of industries, departments and issues. It can help you to pick up on trends you wouldn’t otherwise see and proactively address concerns.”