Qlik and Montclair Put Analytics in The Hands of Future Decision Makers
Montclair University leverages Qlik’s Continuous Classroom to further students’ use of analytics to solve real world case studies
Montclair State University is based in New Jersey with a history that dates back to 1908. The institution has been designated as a Research Doctoral University by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, and with a total of 11 colleges and schools, the university caters to more than 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students with more than 300 doctoral, master's and baccalaureate programs.
During the summer session of this year’s ‘Data Analytics & Visualization’ course designed and taught by Professor Naushad Kollikkathara, graduate students had the opportunity to leverage the Qlik Continuous Classroom as a part of the curriculum. The course’s goal is to replicate real-life business problems and enable students to develop applicable solutions backed by data. Graduate students analyze and visualize business data, exposing them to more guided and insight driven decision-making.
Montclair’s Academic Program Dr. Naushad Kollikkathara and Dr. Rashmi Jain, former Chair of Information Management & Business Analytics, were introduced to Qlik’s Academic Program through a guest lecture from Christopher Ferrara, General Manager of SDG Group USA and a Qlik partner. Quickly realizing the value of Qlik, the professors collaborated with Qlik’s Academic Program to integrate it into the college classroom. Dr. Kollikkathara crafted a syllabus in which professors, students, and researchers could leverage Qlik alongside its learning modules. The access to Qlik’s Data Analytics curriculum featured lecture notes, on-demand videos, handouts, activities and real-world, interactive business use cases which enabled professors to easily integrate them into the class. Passing the Qlik Sense Qualification exam was also made a requirement for course completion.
“Qlik is very adoptable and adaptable when it comes to meeting the requirements of students.The ease of use made it simple for students to quickly integrate Qlik into their projects.The data visualization principles students learned through Qlik will set these students up to bring real-world skills into their work environments.”
– Naushad Kollikkathara, Montclair University
Through their exposure to multiple static and dynamic data sets in Qlik, students in one scenario collected New York City school bus breakdowns and their correlation to traffic delays by analyzing data from school busses, other traffic incidents, and number of accidents reported. Actively cross examining and analyzing data live in Qlik enabled the students to develop well-guided strategies to solve real-life hurdles. In another case, students collected vast numbers of written reviews from restaurant review sites such as Zomato, OpenTable and Yelp to identify the value of food establishments by quality and price. Through these use cases, students were guided by features like the Qlik Insight Advisor and Associative Engine, provoking them to ask the right questions with their data.
“Often time students look at data and analytics in very traditional ways. Qlik has opened their eyes to many modern approaches and has made agile data processes more accessible to students. Time and again when I introduce Qlik to classes, students are amazed and quickly become Qlik advocates”
– Christopher Ferrara, SDG Group
Witnessing the positive impact on students, the Montclair team plans to continue the use of the Qlik Continuous Classroom as a learning model for future courses. Montclair sees tremendous value and potential in leveraging data analytics and intends to position it across more academic areas in the coming semesters, encouraging future decision-makers to utilize the power of analytics.
