Instructional Uses of Web-Based Survey Software

Recent technological advances have led to changes in how instruction is delivered. Such technology can create opportunities to enhance instruction and make instructors more efficient in performing instructional tasks, especially if the technology is easy to use and requires no training. One such technology, web-based survey software, is extremely accessible for anyone with basic computer skills. Web-based survey software can be used for a variety of instructional purposes to streamline instructor tasks, as well as enhance instruction and communication with students. Following a brief overview of the technology, we discuss how Web Forms from nTreePoint can be used to conduct instructional surveys, collect course feedback, conduct peer evaluations of group work, collect completed assignments, schedule meeting times among multiple people, and aid in pedagogical research. We also discuss our experiences with these tasks within traditional on-campus courses and how they were enhanced or expedited by the use of web-based survey software

Using Excel to Make Strategic Managerial Decisions

This case involves actual data from a student managed café that serves as a learning laboratory for a college of business. The student team that manages the café has never had access to precise data from a point of sale system until this semester. However, once they downloaded the raw data from the cash register they were unable to make sense of the data. This was in part due to the data entry errors in recording transactions as well as operational issues such as multiple managers entering new items into the register when there is already an existing code for the item in the Point of Sale (POS) database. To clean up the data and develop actionable spreadsheet based results, the managers decide to call in a team of information systems consultants to help them clean the dataset while not losing important data. To address the operating concerns of the managers, the consultants analyze the sales data for a number of questions whose answers can be used to improve how the café operates. By using Excel to analyze the data, consultants will be able to address the managerial decisions faced by the café team

Teaching Case: Analyzing Disney World Wait Time Data: A Lesson in Visualization Using Tableau

We present a case study to teach data visualization with Tableau in an introductory business analytics course. The case uses publicly available data sets from touringplans.com that record wait times for various attractions at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. In the case study, students use Tableau to clean, organize, and analyze wait time data, and to create data visualizations to illustrate how wait times are affected by several variables. Ultimately, students use their results to inform the client, a Disney travel agent, about when wait times are the shortest and longest. The case was piloted in a business analytics course; students reported finding the case study useful and interesting and were largely observed to meet the learning goals of the exercise

Instructional Uses of Web-Based Survey Software

Recent technological advances have led to changes in how instruction is delivered. Such technology can create opportunities to enhance instruction and make instructors more efficient in performing instructional tasks, especially if the technology is easy to use and requires no training. One such technology, web-based survey software, is extremely accessible for anyone with basic computer skills. Web-based survey software can be used for a variety of instructional purposes to streamline instructor tasks, as well as enhance instruction and communication with students. Following a brief overview of the technology, we discuss how Web Forms from nTreePoint can be used to conduct instructional surveys, collect course feedback, conduct peer evaluations of group work, collect completed assignments, schedule meeting times among multiple people, and aid in pedagogical research. We also discuss our experiences with these tasks within traditional on-campus courses and how they were enhanced or expedited by the use of web-based survey software