While working as a young engineer I was asked to visualise the impact of dredging in a river. This aim of being able to take data from an event or process then recurred throughout the following 25 years of my work in engineering, insurance and banking. Taking typically process data and helping the process owners and operators understand, control and improve their outputs, I have gained experience in collecting or extracting, visualising and making meaning of a range of data types.
Since 2016 I have been studying at the University of Technology Sydney in the Master of Data Science and Innovation course. One of my aims was to gain exposure and experience in some of the current data science tools and how to apply them. A much more useful and challenging outcome however has been the thinking and reflection that is built into the course. What is ethical use of data? What sort of problems should you try and solve?
At this point I have two paths down which I can tread as I seek to apply my analytical skills. The first path involves taking my business process skills and apply data science concepts for data driven process analysis and improvement.
The second path draws on an approach of the MDSI course which involves reflecting on your own learning styles, and approaches, and looks at how you might use available data to understand your own learning. These activities exposed me to the field of Learning Analytics (LA) which, because of my wife’s research and the schooling of our children, fascinated me. A chance to work with a secondary (7-12) high school on what data exists in their school and how it is used only served to confirm my interest.
My goal now is to take my new and improving skills, combine them with my experience in telling stories with data to help people understand and improve, and apply it all in a Learning Analytics or Process Improvement context. In LA I’d would focus on schools, a key learning environment in which LA is emerging as teachers and LA practitioners start to understand the data they have available, build processes to capture it and apply research and experience to help make meaning and deliver better teaching and learning. In Process Improvement I’m unsure at the moment where I might be able to deliver the most benefit.