Center for Analytics and Creativity
Tableau Citizen Data Science Certificate
Tableau is the fastest-growing data visualization tool in the world. Due to its simplicity, versatility, and sheer power Tableau is the leading business intelligence tool in the industry. Employers are seeking out hires who can use this tool to help derive insights from data that can solve business challenges.
To satisfy the current market needs, USF Muma College of Business, in association with Tableau, has created a Citizen Data Science Certificate Program that allows any student who earns a degree from the college a chance to graduate with this additional certification.
Since 2018, the USF Muma College of Business has embedded Tableau’s visualization platform into several courses in its undergraduate curriculum. Each of these courses has a Tableau exercise where students analyze a dataset, produce visualizations/ dashboards, and tell a story that emerges. Every assignment ends with a short video produced by the student, in which the student shows how Tableau can be used for a dataset in that course to generate important business insights.
Students who want to earn the certificate must make their dashboard interactive and submit at least four different YouTube URL projects from four different courses. The Tableau project from GEB 4890 – Strategic Management/Executive Decision Making must be one of the four that were submitted toward the certification. This certification is not a requirement for graduation.
The Specific Courses
An initiative such as this requires many departments within a college to coordinate in order to determine the courses in which the exercises will be embedded. It is important that the individual instructors determine the specifics of the exercise, but they will all have some common characteristics:
- the students will have a related dataset that makes sense for that course,
- they will use Tableau’s visualization platform to analyze and come up with stories, and
- they will produce a short video of this exercise so we can evaluate that each student did indeed complete the exercise (also, the videos are a great way for students to showcase their skills, and we would encourage students to include links to these on their Linkedin/resumes).
After initial discussions with Tableau in Fall 2017 we worked with all the individual departments and identified the specific courses. Note that three of these courses are common for all students, irrespective of the major, some courses are within their individual majors and one is a capstone course common for all majors. The specific courses are listed below (note that these may change, but the program will ensure that all students have at the minimum four courses in which they would have done an assignment as described above). Students typically take this over a two year period. So, as they continue to do these assignments across courses they gradually get better at Tableau, the art of storytelling, and build a deep understanding for how data drives the future of functional roles in business.
The courses that have this assignment built in are listed below.
Any three courses from this list will count towards the Citizen Data Scientist Certificate:
Core Courses
- ACG 2021: Principles of Financial Accounting
- ISM 3011: Information Systems in Organizations
- CGS 2100: Computers in Business
Accounting
Finance
Personal Financial Planning
Business Analytics & Information Systems
Management
Marketing
Capstone Course - Required beyond the three choices above
- GEB 4890: Strategic Management / Executive Decision Making