Teaching With Tableau Academic Curriculum

Teaching Data Analytics

Teaching Data Analytics starts with teaching how to ask good questions. To ask good questions, you need to know what data is and how to interpret it. While we offer many different types of curricula, each has a core ethos of teaching data skills. When getting started with our curriculum, the first step is picking the one that works best for you.

Choosing the Correct Curriculum

The Tableau for Teaching program offers several ready-made curricula that can be leveraged in your classroom both in person or online. The content is offered for free to anyone who has an active Tableau for Teaching license. Information on how to request the Tableau for Teaching curriculum is available through our curriculum help article. 

The curriculum can be broken down into three different categories: Core Curriculum, Short Courses, and Case Studies.

• Core Curriculum - Includes all the resources needed to teach the topic in a 8-10 week course. Choose this type of curriculum if you want to introduce data and/or Tableau into your course. 
• Short Courses - Uses Trailhead as the content provided paired with in-class discussions based on the content. Choose this curriculum if you want to introduce the topic in an asynchronous format. 
• Case Studies - Smaller bite sized project based assignments that teach a particular topic/feature using real world data sets. Choose this type of curriculum if you are already teaching a topic and want to provide an additional project/group project. 

Teaching with the Core Curriculum

Core curriculum is a full 8-10 week course on a particular topic related to Tableau. Resources included in the core curriculum include weekly slide decks, starter and solution Tableau workbooks, comprehensive teacher guide, and a student guide. This content can be taught in its entirety or broken down into smaller parts that fit your needs. Depending on your needs, you can combine the core curriculum into a larger master content for an entire semester. 

The current core curriculum includes: 

• Data Literacy (Level: Basic) - Broken down into two courses, Data Literacy One and Two, this curriculum provides a foundation of data. The content covers topics such as dimensions, measures, distributions, and correlation. 
  • Teaching Tip - Use this curriculum to teach data foundations and a prereq to teaching Tableau. 
• Tableau Fundamentals (Level: Basic) - This curriculum covers all the key features of Tableau Desktop. The content covers topics such as connecting to data, filters, charts, dashboards, and visual best practices. 
  • Teaching Tip - Use this curriculum to introduce Tableau to your class. You can teach the entire course or highlight sections such as charts and dashboards. 
• Data Visualization (Level: Intermediate) - The curriculum covers visual best practices, design principles, and communication tips. The content covers topics such as charts, color, typography, infographics, maps, and telling stories. 
  • Teaching Tip - Use this curriculum as a way to compliment your Tableau training with visual best practices. You can also use this curriculum as part of a bigger data analytics course or as a foundation for a course on data visualization. 

Check out this webinar on how to teach Tableau fundamentals and visualizations using Tableau Cloud web author and the Superstore data set. 

Teaching with Short Courses 

Short courses present a topic in 1- 4 weeks using an asynchronous format. While these courses can be taught in an in-person format, they are structured in a hybrid learning format. The material for each topic is presented in an eLearning format through Trailhead. Providing the content in this format allows the learner to absorb the content when they are able. To complement the content on Trailhead, a set of discussion questions have been provided for each topic. The discussions can take place in class or virtually through the learning management system. 

The current short courses include: 

• AI Fundamentals (Level: Basic) - This course is designed to teach students how artificial intelligence works and how to use it effectively and responsibly. The course does not go deep into technical aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Instead the course focuses on understanding the foundation of AI, how data plays an important role in AI, and the ethical use of AI.
  • Teaching Tip - Use this course where you want to establish a foundational understanding of artificial intelligence.

Teaching with the Case Studies

Case Studies use a provided data set and prompt to introduce Tableau or use it as a final group project. The case provides background information about the topic, a data dictionary, and a guided prompt. Along with a guided prompt, the case includes an additional open- ended prompt for the students to practice the skills they have learned throughout the semester. While these studies can be taught using the guided prompts, they can also be used with minimal direction, asking the students to come up with their own ideas and solutions. 

The current case studies include: 

• Space Division using NASA data (Level: Basic) - This project uses a data set from NASA.gov, developed by the Meteoritical Society, to provide examples on how to explore and visualize data. The project includes two parts, the first teaches data exploration and the second explores Tableau and introduces key features such as filters, maps, and charts.
  • Teaching Tip - Use this case study to introduce data and Tableau into your course. 
• Exploring short-term rentals with Airbnb data (Level: Basic) - This case study uses data from Inside Airbnb to provide students with the opportunity to explore features of Tableau. This case study highlights how Tableau can be used to answer analysis questions for a company perspective. Students are given a prompt based on the background information. Using Tableau, students will create a set of data visualizations to help answer the prompt. 
  • Teaching Tip - Use this case study to provide students with additional practice with Tableau. This case pairs well with the Tableau Fundamentals core curriculum.