Abstract
- As the demand for business intelligence professionals keeps growing, educators face a challenge to calibrate their instruction in a way that accommodates the specific needs of practitioners while also providing college students with a broader foundation that includes general BI skills and applies an interdisciplinary approach. The current paper describes a pedagogical method called “report-oriented learning,” which seeks to combine the more common methods of problem-based learning and case-based learning and, thus, balances the teaching of concepts with practical application. Report-oriented learning requires students to reflect on the knowledge they gained in the conceptual parts of the course and apply critical thinking through the generation of different types of reports. This paper describes the application of the report-oriented method in a business intelligence course that combined three instructional components: (1) basic concepts and quizzes, (2) hands-on projects, and (3) reports. The results indicate that the method was well received and perceived by students as having improved their critical thinking and specific technical skills in applying BI techniques and professionally presenting their findings.