A Data-Story Library for New Zealand First-year Business Students
Status
Completed: 2 November 2012
Project Details
A project, completed in 2012, to collect datasets related to New Zealand business activity for use in teaching introductory statistics and quantitative methods to undergraduate business students, and to place them in an online data-story library for open access. A collaboration of Massey University and University of Auckland.
Aims:
The main aims of the project were to:
- assemble a series of data sets and associated 'stories' of how and why they were collected, for a first-year business statistics paper
- develop recent New Zealand-based examples drawn from across business disciplines in order to engage students and provide a cohesive degree experience.
Methodology:
A mixed method approach was used including:
- consultation with faculty at regional Schools of Business
- a review of business literature and the popular press to identify examples where basic statistical techniques have been used
- comparing student performance data across the two offerings in Semester 1 2011 and Semester 1 2012
- an online survey of student attitudes and opinions towards the use of NZ Business‐related datasets was conducted.
Team
Dr Howard Edwards
Project Leader
Massey University
John Xie
Massey University
Christine Miller
The University of Auckland
Ross Parsonage
The University of AucklandStatus
Funding
$7,451.00 (excl GST)
Key Findings
The key findings from the project were:
- Based on the evidence received to date, the introduction of datasets related to New Zealand Business activity has been associated with a positive effect on the learning experience of students.
- Student participation indicators have improved since the datasets were introduced and student survey results suggest that students’ attitudes towards the use of Statistics in Business Studies have increased in a positive fashion.
Key Recommendations
Future developments | More needs to be done in terms of incorporating datasets into CAST and into assignments, and more cross-sectional datasets need to be collected. Students (in particular international students) need to be exposed to datasets relating to international activity, and in the future, it will be important to obtain datasets which (a) relate New Zealand to other countries such as China, and (b) show important aspects of international business activity as it relates to New Zealand and its place in the global marketplace.
