Tableau for Teaching: Teaching Tableau

Contents 

Teaching Data Analytics With Tableau
What is the Tableau Academic Curriculum?
How to Request the Curriculum

Teaching Data Analytics with Tableau

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.

Depending on your need and time, Tableau can be taught in your classroom in as little as 1 week and up to 10 weeks. If you want to simply introduce the topics, set aside 1 or 2 weeks to introduce the major concepts and go through one of the case studies. If you want to prepare your students to sit for the Tableau Desktop exam, set aside a minimum of 5 weeks and up to 10 weeks. 

What is the Tableau Academic Curriculum?

We want to make sure you are ready on day 1 to teach Tableau in your classroom. To help ensure success, Tableau provides free ready-made courses to get you started. Along with a collection of ready-made courses, we offer a collection of case studies that cover various features of Tableau. These cases use Tableau to solve questions using real world data.

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

• 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/Projects - 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. 

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) - This curriculum is 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) - This 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. 

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.
• Data Fundamentals for AI (Level: Basic) - This course is designed to teach students the importance of data and ethics in preparation for the AI innovations shaping our future.
  • Teaching Tip - Use this course as a follow up to the AI Fundamentals course.
• Guide to Misleading Charts (Level: Basic) - This course is designed to teach students how to accurately read and present chart data and avoid misleading chart designs. The course is made up of five sections:
  • Teaching Tip - Use this course as a stand alone or pair it with Tableau Fundamentals, Data Literacy or Data Visualization. 

Case Studies/Projects

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: 

• Press Start: Exploring the History of Video Games (Level: Basic)- The project includes data that was put together by the community project #GamesNightViz. This project focuses on core features of Tableau including comparing categories, data over time, parts of a whole, and using table calculations.
  • Teaching Tip - The graded assignments are great to use as a midterm or final assignment/group project. The practice assignment is a great option for the start of the class as it helps students familiarize themselves with Tableau. If you are using the Tableau Fundamentals curriculum, this project can serve as a final lab or project.
• Attendance in Women’s College Basketball (Level: Basic) - This project was created in collaboration with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The goal of this project is to use attendance data from women's college basketball games to teach core Tableau features and foundational data analytics skills including building charts, adding filters, using maps, and creating calculated fields.
  • Teaching Tip - The graded assignments are great to use as a midterm or final assignment/group project. The practice assignment is a great option for the start of the class as it helps students familiarize themselves with Tableau. If you are using the Tableau Fundamentals curriculum, this project can serve as a final lab or project.
• Hands on with Tableau Dashboard Accessibility (Level: Intermediate) - This project explores the various ways to master inclusive data visuals with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles. This project provides students the opportunity to design universally accessible dashboards, and ensure their analytics are user-friendly and inclusive for all abilities. Each exercise is made up of individual steps. The steps are written to provide a bit of a challenge, but we’ve provided detailed answers under each step.
  • Teaching Tip - The graded assignments are great to use as a midterm or final assignment/group project. The practice assignment is a great option for the start of the class as it helps students familiarize themselves with Tableau. If you are using the Tableau Fundamentals curriculum, this project can serve as a final lab or project.
• 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 - The graded assignments are great to use as a midterm or final assignment/group project. The practice assignment is a great option for the start of the class as it helps students familiarize themselves with Tableau. If you are using the Tableau Fundamentals curriculum, this project can serve as a final lab or project.

How to Request the Academic Curriculum

To download the Tableau Academic Curriculum, you first need an active Tableau for Teaching license.  If needed, use the Tableau for Teaching: Getting Access to Tableau help article to complete that step.  

Your Tableau license will be provided via email. After obtaining an active license, use this form to request the current curriculum. Note: The curriculum request form requires you to enter your active Tableau license key. Please have that handy when you fill the form out. 

Curriculum requests are processed every Friday and you will receive an email with links to download the files. The curriculum files include slides, exercise files, teacher guides, and a LMS export file.Using the Curriculum LMS export files 

The LMS export files can be directly included into your current or future course. The files will include everything you need to get started. The files are zipped into an LMS format called common cartridge. You will need access to an LMS to access and view the content. Details on how to import files into an LMS are listed below. 

• Canvas
• Blackboard
• Brightspace (D2L)
• Moodle

If you don’t have access to an LMS or do not see your LMS listed above, you can request access to the files by emailing tft@tableau.com.