Tableau Presentation & Support for a Sociology Class

Task: Professor Nierobisz wanted to find a more engaging approach to data for her criminology course. The data were fascinating - but diving into them with SPSS (a tool well known to Prof. Nierobisz) was an obstacle that diverted their attention from the content of the course. In stepped the DataSquad to support Tableau, a data visualization software with which Prof. Nierobisz had only passing familiarity. Yiwen Luo and Paula provided in-class instruction and follow-up office hours to support Prof Nierobisz and her students in Tableau and sometimes in the finer details of working with data. With Tableau students were empowered to create informative data visualisations.

Goal & Result: Provide Prof Nierobisz (and her students) hands-on support so she could stay focused on course content & not fuss with the inevitable technical obstacles. The DataSquad also provided a step-to-step tutorial to help students familiarize themselves with Tableau and their data. The data that students used to learn Tableau is also part of the curriculum, so students both learn the course material and the data visualisation skills at the same time.