Title: Why Thinking Matters: Data Analytics for Business Students: Using RapidMiner to Develop Systems Thinking Skills
Author(s) : Anna Czegledi, Ken Dafoe
This study's objective is to investigate and describe RapidMiner for teaching Data Analytics to human resource(HR) students. Microsoft Excel is the standard tool for data analysis in business; however, it does not allow for predictive analytics (i.e., predicting employee churn, salary levels). We wanted to provide students a deeper learning experience beyond the spreadsheet by using the open source data mining tool RapidMiner to give them a competitive advantage on the job market. Based on their experience, students completed a survey that analyzed the impact of using RapidMiner on their engagement, learning satisfaction and understanding of Systems Thinking. We adapted active learning strategies and a HR data set from IBM to reduce the gap between business education and practice. We discuss the implications of this study and provide practical recommendations on using RapidMiner for teaching Data Analytics, and as a method to develop fundamentals of systems thinking for business students.