Microsoft Excel and Access are widely used in introductory courses designed to teach the fundamentals of spreadsheet and relational database modeling skills in various disciplines. To achieve the targeted learning outcomes, instructors of these courses strive to provide students with guided, frequent, and incrementally fruitful practice with the…

Data literacy has become a much sought after skill by organizations as the importance of data driven decision making continues to rise in importance. This study explores the teaching of Tableau as a supplement to Excel to enhance the data literacy skills of students. Twenty-eight students taking an introductory course in Business Analytics and…

As educational systems move from onsite to online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers face the difficulty of designing online examination formats which minimize opportunities for dishonesty. In this paper, we expose our design of such a format: a protected Microsoft Excel spreadsheet containing short-answer questions, which was implemented in a…

In this paper the authors present a unique approach to teaching introductory statistics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The approach uses a feature in Excel called "spinners" to dynamically adjust key variables, such as sample size, confidence levels, and probabilities, among others, to enable an expanded discussion of…

Addressing societal issues in civil and environmental engineering increasingly requires skills in data science and programming. To date, there is not much known about the extent students are learning these skills in current civil and environmental engineering curricula. We conducted a survey of accredited civil and environmental engineering…

The authors' objective was to uncover the difference in competency when teaching Excel to undergraduate students on two distinct and discrete operating platforms. The authors calibrated competency by comparing scores of MOS-EXCEL Certification Test results. The authors conclude that the null hypothesis indicating no difference in mean scores of…

It has become increasingly important for future business professionals to understand statistical computing methods as data science has gained widespread use in contemporary organizational decision processes in recent years. Used by scores of academics and practitioners in a variety of fields, Monte Carlo simulation is one of the most broadly…

Data-handling, processing, and analysis skills are an integral part of a chemist's skill set and, more generally, are highly sought by employers. We report a self-directed workshop to develop and advance these key skills using the popular spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel. Making use of its accessible user interface, various contextualized…

A bachelor's degree program in chemistry typically starts with basic concepts in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Those principles are very important because they pave the ground for future advanced studies and, therefore, one needs to present them in a clear but rigorous way. One example is provided by the mathematical notion of an iterative…

This article illustrates ways that dynamic software using some sophisticated techniques in Excel can be used to demonstrate fundamental ideas related to sampling distributions and their properties to increase student understanding of the concepts and methods in elementary statistics courses. The article considers such sampling distributions as the…

Teaching quantitative methods at the undergraduate level is a difficult yet rewarding endeavor due to the challenges instructors face in presenting the material. One way to bolster student learning is through the use of statistical software packages. Google Sheets is a cloud-based spreadsheet program capable of many basic statistical procedures,…

Dashboards allow managers to interact with data, asking "what if" questions and looking for patterns. This topic is typically mentioned in information systems courses; however, many students will not have experience with developing dashboards or using them to answer business questions. The purpose of this assignment is to provide…

in this paper we focus on the link between the use of dynamic geometry software and student understanding for the solution of systems of linear equations from an instrumental genesis perspective. Three task-based interviews were conducted with an undergraduate linear algebra student majoring in mathematics education and proficient in using dynamic…

Many university programs include Microsoft Excel courses given their value as a scientific and technical tool. However, evaluating what is effectively learned by students is a challenging task. Considering multiple-choice written exams are a standard evaluation format, this study aimed to uncover the features influencing students' success in…

In the modern higher educational system, technology permeated almost all the provisions of educational processes and transformed individual learning transactions. Empirical evidence reveals students' skill gaps in the digitized campus and the real-world work environment driven by technology. Technical training is of high value and in high demand…