David Bond 00:00
So, thinking about what Business Analytics is it’s in effects data driven decision making. It's how to use data in a way, which helps you provide value to your organisation. Now, there are different types of business analytics. This is one of the sorts of more standardised versions of what you see. I mean, sometimes you see a fourth version in here. But in a way, this is a really neat encapsulation of where we go with the course.
David Bond 00:28
So, on one hand, there's descriptive analytics. So, this really gets out this idea of understanding what has happened. So, what has happened, documenting it, visualising it, reporting it, and that's useful but it's not really the most powerful things where we want to get to. Where we want to start to get to is, how does this affect the future? And this is where predictive analytics start coming in. And there are a whole range of different tools that can be used, and we do cover off on a whole range of these as we go through the course. Now they could be very traditional analytics, which, you know, you can use quite large datasets with. And we'll explore those earlier on in the course. But we have various subjects throughout the course. Things like machine learning, where you start to interrogate and work with much larger, larger data sets, and in slightly different and more technical ways. And the idea of predictive analytics is to understand relationships between various phenomenon, and then to be able to use that to be able to extrapolate as to what you think might happen in the future.
David Bond 01:29
When we think about prescriptive analytics, and prescriptive and predictive, there's a lot of similarities between them. But the probably the key difference when it gets too prescriptive, and when you think about often where we see prescriptions in place, its doctors providing us prescriptions, it's about a course of action. It's, "Here's the thing that we suggest that you do". So, you can come up with predictions about, you know, what you think is happening down the future. But ultimately, decision makers like to have some idea of what is it that they're going to put in place. So, this is where identifying a course of action and actually narrowing it down to say, this is what based on the work that we've done, this is what you should do. And so that's quite a powerful thing to be able to get to. And that's, you know, I suppose that's the overarching idea, of course, is to be able to take, to identify a problem from that problem, be able to find out where you need, where you where you find the data. Sometimes it will be already housed within the organisation, sometimes it will be held externally, sometimes it won't exist, and you have to run experiments, or you have to find other ways to generate it. Then to run, you know, use the various tool sets that you have at your disposal and these can range from not very sophisticated, but still quite useful, to quite sophisticated and complicated. To be able to use some sort of toolset to be able to run some analysis on it. And then once you've generated those insights, what does this mean for you? And what does this mean in terms of communicating that to a broader audience. So that's the idea of analytics, right?
David Bond 02:59
So, there are a number of different options. And you know, which is the right one for you is going to be very much on a case-by-case basis as to how you like to study, how long you want to sort of delve into this, where you currently are, what your interests are. So, I can't give you a one size fits all in terms of which one is right for you, right here and now. But when it comes to it, we have a face-to-face course offering. And we have an online course offering. So, I’ll talk primarily about the face-to-face course offering to begin with, and then we'll talk about the online once we wrap up towards the end.
David Bond 03:35
We have a Graduate Certificate in Business Analytics, which is 24 credit points. And that would be doing it full time, you would complete that within a one semester, one semester period of time. So, you know, four or five months or so. The Master of Business Analytics is 72 credit points and that is obviously a much deeper experience in the grad cert and that would extend over three semesters where you're doing 24 credit points a semester full time. And then there is finally an extension option, which is 96 credit points. So that just adds one more semester onto the standard Master of Business Analytics. So that's 96 credit points.
David Bond 04:13
So how the Master of Business Analytics works. So again, I'll preface this just the commentary around this slide pertains to the, pertains to the face-to-face version, the online version is similar, but there's some small differences to it. So, we'll talk to what those differences are in a few moments time. So, on the left-hand, left-hand side, outside of the blue boxes, these are the core subjects that you would do in your first semester. So again, I'm basing it on doing it full time. If you're engaging part time you extend this out a little bit more. These core subjects every single student will do. Foundations of Business Analytics, which is a three credit points subjects, Data Processing using SAS, which is a three-credit points subject and the first studio, the foundation studio and these are very much get you and certainly thinking foundations in studio very much start to get you thinking in this kind of analytics framework mentality. Learning about how to ideate, learning to study a touch on finding data, maybe a little bit of cleaning and managing that data depending on not a huge amount of that early on, we sort of move into that a little bit more later in the process.
David Bond 05:22
A little bit of an introduction into different techniques, again, early stages, so we're not, we're not going to sort of go too crazy with it to start with. But again, very useful techniques without having to be, you know, an amazing code or anything like that, at this point. Data processing using Sass is one of the three language-based subjects that we've got. So later on, which we'll just we won't jump to yet, we've got another couple of small three credit points, subjects in art and in Python. So, this starts to get you to think about, you know, sort of thinking about some of that coding syntax in a language which is a set-up, which is used in a lot of large organisations today.
David Bond 06:01
So those are the subjects everyone does. Now looking at the two blue to blue boxes, these, you'll either do one of one or the other. And the reason behind this is, we want to create people who are graduates who have, you know, a foot in both camps. So, you have, you know, if you come from a business background, we want you gearing up a little bit in this IT, in this IT space. If you've got an IT background, a programming background, you know, more, it's kind of that sort of computer engineering background, you'll go into, we want to give you some sense of that business side of things. So, you know whether it be accounting and marketing and whatnot. So those two streams, if you have a business background, you will do the IT stream and a lot of people I've talked to I mean, from those that I have, this seems to be, for example, a number of accountants during the program and they can see, you know, being an accountant myself, I can certainly understand this, they can see the value in getting an analytics background. So, they will come into the IT stream, and they will do Enabling Enterprise Information Systems and Database and this gives them a sense of one, how information systems are structured within organisations and databases, starts looking at SQL. So, you start to understand how data is going to be held and organised within organisations. If you come from an IT background, you'll go into the business stream. And there you'll get touch points on accounting and on finance, marketing, and management. Now, generally speaking, this will be the way this will get done is looking at your work background, or whatever sort of degrees that you have to date. If it is a pretty, if you have experience or educational background in both areas. This is something where ultimately, like it would come to me and quite often may will ask you look at what it is, and we'll make a judgement on it. But we'll also be open to talking to you about you know, which seems to fit best but it's around given the whole purpose of in the philosophy about it is to work on the area that you may not have had so much exposure to today. So, I know that sometimes a bit tricky, where you want to keep going on the things that you're good at, and you know about but we're actually trying to expose you to things which may be a little bit new for you. So those are the two strings.
David Bond 08:14
So, if you click through so that first bit, what we just talked about is the grad cert, if you move beyond that, the subjects that have come in just underneath. So, Python, which we spoke about studio 2: the specialisation studio, and then the Innovation Studio. These are the remaining core subjects that everyone needs to do. Now, you won't necessarily do all of them in the second, the second semester, you would generally and can be open for depending on what your timetable looks like. You generally do Python and R and the second studio in your second semester. And then you do the third studio or studio three, I should say in your third semester.
David Bond 08:49
Now Python and R start to give you a more of a working background around some additional languages, the studios and the purpose of the studios is by the end of the third studio and innovation is that your there is group work within these and that by the end of it, you're able to work for one of them. Not on absolutely real projects but for all intents and purposes, you know, effectively a real business analytics projects in a diversified diverse team environment where you're having to look at, you know, ideating on a problem, working with data sets to come up with some sort of insights from that and to be able to communicate that to key stakeholders. That's where we want you to be able to get to because that is very representative of what happens out there in the workplace.
David Bond 09:39
As you move through from Studio One to studio three. Studio One is a lot more faculty led. So, there's a lot more support in terms of kind of how it's delivered and in how it's worked and how faculty work with you. And then by the third studio, I mean obviously faculty is there to support and that is our role, but it's going to be more led in terms of where you want to take and what you want to do that by yourself. Which again he's sort of representative what happens out there in the workplace. Come to the next little bit next little bit, you then have a range of specialisation options. So, for a standard master’s course, you would have them 24 credit points, effectively free to do various specialisations and there's a whole range of different specialisations stream options there. Look, I won't go into them in detail here, they're all available through the handbook. But it ranges from, you know, going deeper into, say, data analytics, it may be going into sort of financial analytics, looking more at accounting and financial sort of areas, it could be more you're interested in marketing. And that's, that's the thing, you really want to get to grips with them. There's a marketing analytics stream. It could be more on interaction design. So that's starting to think about visualisation could be something which is, you know, something that you find is more down your alley, then maybe the software development interaction design stream is where you start to go. There's also an opportunity just as choose electives within it. So, we can, we can very much find what works for you and where you want to go, and we'll help support that based on how we can structure what sort of your stream what stream offerings are or your electives. And I had I had a conversation with somebody last week who was looking at, they had very clear ideas about the subjects they wanted to do and were able to actually piece together the thing, you know, the different subjects to make it into a setup that worked really well for them. So, again, if there are things in there and you're not too sure, then I'm more than happy to have that conversation and then to find out what would work best for you. So that is the structure of the full Master of Business Analytics. If you do the extension program, there's then just another 24 credit points of sort of free choice or you know, a specialisation in there for you.
David Bond 11:47
So, what we've been talking to date has been the face-to-face Master of Business Analytics. We also have a purely online Master of Business Analytics. Now, what's important here is I'll talk a little bit about the similarities, and then a little bit about the differences. So, the top line, if we, if you have a look at the top there. There's the subject set for the graduate certificate is almost identical. So, we still got foundations of Business Analytics, SAS, Enabling Enterprise Database, The Business Stream. Where it's different is instead of studio, instead of Studio One, it's got data ethics and regulation. We don't need to go into the detail of why that happened in this case, but it is, so it's a different, it is a different subject in that in the graduate certificate. So that's the first difference. That's here, a lot of similarities.
David Bond 12:36
The second difference, and its sort of important to know, the delivery method. Now obviously, if it's online, that's pretty straightforward and obvious difference. But it's not just that. In a, in the on-campus version, what it would, what how it'd be delivered would be 24 credit points, if you're doing it full time, where you do 24 credit points in Autumn, and then 24 credit points in Spring. So, you do if you're doing six credit points, subjects, you do four subjects and then four subjects. In the online program you do one subjects at a time, but you do them in in effectively shorter sprints. So, you do the six teaching weeks, and then sort of a week for getting assessments ready. So effectively seven-week blocks of subjects, seven-week blocks and there are six, seven-week blocks that take place over the course of the year. So, you just do one subject at a time. Also, you do six credit points at a time. So, the next offering, the next intake for Business Analytics will take place at the end of the month for the online version and this would have foundations and data processing using SAS so those six credit points, those would roll out at the same time. It is purely delivered online, there is no campus requirements to it at all. It's a little bit, there are no electives or specialisations. It is just a set of subjects, which we'll see the full set in just a moment. Yeah, that's probably the main difference, it's it still has the same essence to it. There are fewer choices in terms of what you can do and it's obviously delivered in a different way.
David Bond 14:10
In terms of the remaining subjects, as I said, the big difference in terms of subject offering within the online only version as compared to the on-campus version is there are no electives. There are no specialisation streams. There is just, these are the subjects that are available for it. So, you still have Python, you still have R. There are two studios instead of three, you know, as part of the design for this course, we felt that in the online environment, the studios having three studio offerings wouldn't be the most effective way to do it. So, we went with two studio offerings and then four other subjects, which gives you a nice kind of range of different analytics sort of analytics topics from customer analytics, that sort of more marketing side, Machine learning, as the name suggests about machine learning financial analysts and then data visualisation and Visual Analytics being the fourth and that to round it up. So those are that's a course structure for the online version.
Dhurata Stenaj 15:13
Okay, David, I think we already touched base already on online versus face to face. So, I guess we don't really need to go too much into it. But I guess, you know, things have changed so much in the past few years and so, people are still probably that I always get asked, "Is it going to be online? is it going to be hybrid?", So I guess for the Business Analytics course, is a bit of both them?
David Bond 15:36
Yeah, look, I mean, it's a good question. I mean, I genuinely thought I think as most of us did, that life was gonna go back to normal and 2021. That didn't happen. And then it was gonna go back to normal for this year or the end of last year and then that didn't happen. I suppose there's an element of, you know, we, we support students where, you know, we support students wherever they're at. Depending on the subject, and depending on the exact details of the subject, and where people are and, and we're trying to get intelligence around kind of locations. We absolutely have a preference for the on-campus course for it to be delivered face to face but we've also got to be mindful that that's for logistical reasons also, and for logistical reasons that may not be possible for everyone to physically be in and also people, there are still risk factors. I'm still talking to people now who are still concerned with sort of case numbers, and they may have family, their family members with health issues so it is watching brief. The one thing I can say, though, is firstly, from just the fact that we had to pivot so hard to be able to deliver online. We've got, we've gotten good at it but the second part of that which is important in a in above just the fact that we had to pivot online is the fact that we also delivered this course in a completely online way. We've had to learn how to do that really, really effectively because it's not quite the same as just taking a normal course and, and just putting everything on to, onto a learning management system. So, we work hard with our teaching and learning team to make sure that how we put things together, and how we prepare it, and how we deliver it work in a hybrid setting, working on, in an online setting. I fully anticipate 2023. We'll be back on campus completely with everything. 2020, for Spring 22, I'd really hope that we can get most if not all subjects back on campus that ultimately some of these decisions end up above my head. So, it's a hard one for me to answer specifically.
Dhurata Stenaj 17:29
It's not easy, right? Because things change so dramatically as well, as we found last year. But hopefully we can think of back on campus. You've already touched on I guess the learning management systems that UTS and academics use for teaching this course. I guess from a student’s perspective, what is it that they can expect from the course from I guess, innovation and teaching and learning technology?
David Bond 17:54
Yeah, look, I think the biggest thing and fun it's a really funny one, because it sounds on one hand, technology. Technology is important and we've got to make sure that there are the key things which is sitting there. But funnily enough, the most important thing for me, and I think we're seeing that in terms of how, you know, when I talk to students and students who are near the end of their degree. The thing which is most important is that feeling of belonging and feeling that they're supported through their journey and a big piece of that in terms of how we've designed this, and it's been very considered in the way that we do this, is to really think about what you know, graduates need what you know, for everyone that's on the call, the types of things that you will need to take and advance your career. So, we've got that, whenever in whatever we do, we've got that front of mind in terms of, say content or in terms of interaction with the learning management system, or even in terms of how we support and communicate with you. That's front of mind in terms of trying to treat each one of you as an individual and supporting you in terms of where you want to go. So the way in which assessments are set up are such that they're not just sort of tick and flip type things are actually developed and set up in such a way that they're actually things which will be relevant for you in terms of your careers, and then all the activities that lead to those assessments are all sort of scaffolded to get you to that point where you have then done something in your app to walk away from each subject with something useful for your career. The other piece of that is just how we try to support and work with all of you. So even if even for the students that we've had today, where we haven't necessarily had as many on campus classes. We're still organising meetups, we're still organising catch ups so that, you know, everyone gets to meet everyone else, and we start to you know, hopefully develop those relationships, which is really important. Yeah. So, we'd like to think that the learning management system, what we've done there is all fit for purpose and you know, so that's almost a given. It's more of the design elements around how we put it together, which I think is more important.
Dhurata Stenaj 19:51
Thanks for that. I see that there's a couple of questions in the chat and yes, kind of aligned with what I was just gonna ask next is, a lot of common questions is, "How does a business analytics differ from data analytics?"
David Bond 20:04
Yeah
Dhurata Stenaj 20:04
And then we'll address the questions that are in the chat.
David Bond 20:07
I mean, the first thing I'd say, and this is a really good question, obviously, quite a quite a common one. I wouldn't say they're not completely mutually exclusive. So, it's not, it's not like there's a definitive, here’s analytics, here’s business analytics, here’s data science. I mean, there is, there are a lot of crossovers between them, you know, if you had to sort of, in a broad brushstroke, I think data science would be a lot more technical around the data wrangling and the analysis. It would get, there would be a lot more depth in those particular spaces and that's not to say you can't choose electives within, you know, our set of offerings in the on-campus course, that that really sort of drive you into that a lot more. I suppose from analytics, the idea of analytics is a little bit more that sort of mixture of being able to identify business problems, and to really be around sort of that data driven decision making. So it's, you may not be the data scientists, but you know, how to talk to data scientists, you know, you know, you know, what you're asking them to do you know, how to interpret what's going on, you can, you know, you're able to liaise with them properly, you're, you're able to do some a lot of this on your own if needs be, you're more working in that business capacity capacities of identifying just identifying problems, ideating on problems, coming up with hypotheses or, you know, potential solutions for them working through the data or sort of getting someone else to work through the data, but you know, you being a good consumer of the output, but also being able to work with stakeholders. To be able to communicate effectively, to get your point across or to, you know, to get them to make a decision or what you know, you know, decision that works for the business, or the organisation or government or whoever. So, I think, yeah, it's more, it's a bit of a broad, like, business analytics is more of a broader thing. Whereas data science, and again, like this is in massive generalisation so I'm not trying to be disrespectful for either sort of sphere, but that's kind of the sort of the rough, the rough kind of answer to it.
Dhurata Stenaj 21:58
I guess another common question we get asked is, and I think you've already touched on this is, "What happens if you don't have a business or IT background? Are you able to still do the course?
David Bond 22:08
The short answer is probably maybe. Look what would happen then, I'd and if that's any of you out there at the moment, please put your application in. It would come like you know, if it, if it sorts of falls in a bucket of where it doesn't meet that, it doesn't mean that it would get put through to me, and I'd review it and look. We may come back to you with some more information or may look at you in a holistic fashion, like what you've done in your career and your learning journey so far and say, look, it seems to work based on what you've done and that kind of fits for where we want to go. So, I'd still, if you're still interested, put an application. It will just end up coming through to me.
Dhurata Stenaj 22:42
Great. Thanks. Is there any assumed knowledge for the course?
David Bond 22:46
Apart from that idea of kind of coming in with a business cognate or an IT cognate background, other than that, not really.
Dhurata Stenaj 22:52
When you touched on the subject previously, the course seems to have a mix of three, six and 12 credit points subjects. What are the difference between these in terms of workload? I get asked this a lot.
Dhurata Stenaj 23:03
I guess another question we get asked is, are there opportunities to work with little organisations while you're studying this course?
David Bond 23:03
The idea behind it. In essence and like and this is what I was told way back in the day and how much it is really true. The idea of a 24-credit point semester, if so if we had start that as a base, a 24-credit points semester as a full-time load, which would normally be for six credit points, subjects that would equate to effectively working full time. So, the expectation would be you do 36 hours total. I'm smiling, you're smiling, everyone's like you know how realistic this is but the idea would be that you do come in nine, either contact or at home study hours. Nine hours each week on each six credit points subjects so that is the idea so if you have a six credit of points subject, you're meant to be doing was that 108, 108-120 hours over a semester of kind of lectures or workshops or seminars and online preparation study and assessments and whatnot. That's the idea. Now whether or not you do you need to do 120 hours, that's really up to the individual, some will be able to get through in less, some will be more. So, a three-credit points subject would be 60 hours over the course of a semester, so you know that sort of four to five hours a week of total commitment. A 12 credit points subjects would be that's half a full-time semester, you're spending on that, so it'd be like 200 hours ish, plus or minus of work on it. But how it works with the individual some people are really, really switched on with some subjects and get through it really quickly and it all makes sense, and some people will take longer and some people there'll be good at one thing not so good another at all. It's a little bit difficult to exactly so, but that's the idea.
David Bond 24:48
Yeah, no, good question and look, and that's something we've the one thing that has been difficult, there's a positive side to this. But the one thing that has been difficult time that we've been running the course is we pretty much launched. So, we launched at the end of Feb 2020, and COVID, pretty much took over, we had a week of kind of classes been on face to face, and then we went completely online. It affected a lot of businesses, it obviously affected a lot of how businesses, you know, people couldn't physically go to businesses, so it was, it made some of that quite difficult. In saying that we are, we have had quite a number of students that are working with different organisations or interning in some cases working for pay and others. So that is happening, it's not, what I would say is it's not a formal part of the course as in, we don't have a formal, you know, we don't have a specific subject, which is, which is sort of an internship type subject. So, it's not set up in that way but in saying that, you know, we're having more and more conversations for conversation with the Australian Public Service, we've had conversations with Nelson, you know, a whole range of different plus others. The talent pipe, they're really struggling in terms of the talent pipeline, which is why they're starting to have more and more specific conversations with us around how we can work with them, to start to identify people, you know, work to develop that pipeline to sort of move them out into their organisations and we're continuing to do that with a whole range of different parties. So no, there's no internship, specific course but we certainly have placed people. People are getting opportunities, and, you know, that will continue, if not accelerate, as the world hopefully start to go back to some level of normality.
Dhurata Stenaj 26:27
This leads onto my next question which are, "What are the career prospects once I finish the course?" So where do these placements? Where are these placements?
David Bond 26:37
The different like, the broader piece to it? And again, on one hand, it's an easy question. On one hand, it's quite difficult question. So as opposed to say, something like accounting, where it's very obvious, you know, you do an accounting degree, and then you can go and become an accountant, there's roles for this specific role for accountants, and there's professional qualifications, it's an accountant and whatnot. To be able to use, to be able to work and use effectively the data, it's, there's so many broad ranging ways you can work within so many different organisations. In general, their career prospects are really good. You look at say things like job outlook, the government's job outlook website, and they talked about some data professionals, and there's their expectations or their forecasts on growth are incredibly strong. You look at, you know, all the sort of professional, you know, so the Institute of analytics professionals, Australia, look at other related parties, and the need for people with data skills, is not going to go away. What's interesting, though, is there's a little there's a bit of a tweak to that, which is it's not just the data science skills. So, there are data science has been around for a little while, it's not just those who can really kind of get in and into analyse the data, but it's often it's the next piece of the puzzle is that understanding what that means, understanding how to how to convey that to somebody else, understanding how to get decisions made with. That's the bit that industry is really crying out for, so are there opportunities? Absolutely, that, you know, it's there's a lot of opportunity sitting out there. Is it as a business analyst, per se, no, but the thing is, almost every type of business in every size of business has a need for this and so there's opportunities even as a consultant to work with small and medium enterprises, who may not necessarily have the resources to have their own in house staff, to be able to, to be able to do this, but to be able to generate insights to help them improve what they're doing.
Dhurata Stenaj 28:37
My final question is "What are the assessments like? Are there exams? Is there a lot of group work?"
David Bond 28:43
There is, look, there is some group work not going to, I mean, we have to work in a, we do have to work collaboratively. With the online only course there is limited group work just because the afford, because of how quick the turnaround of subjects are and the fact that it's all online, and people are distributed around the country means it's there's less group work there, but there is still a little bit so I can't say there's none. There's a bit more group work depending on the subject choices within the on-campus course. In terms of the assessments, if there's any exams, it'll be few and far between. It's not really, I'm not gonna say all exams are bad. I mean, there are definitely times when exams can be useful, but it's more practical in nature, what we're getting about. So, you know, could be written reports, you know, for my subject, I lead foundations of business analytics. We have video, it's a video presentation that you have to create, because it's something we're all having to get to do a little bit more of, and to understand how to actually communicate that. Yeah, look, it's not a lot of exams, but there's lots of other things which, you know, still, unfortunately cause a bit of stress, but you know, probably more linked to what you'd be doing out in the real world.
