Advanced Visual Analytics

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  OM 621
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a Business Analytics course for graduate students by Majid Karimi at California State University San Marcos. The textbook provides students with an excellent guide to quickly create interactive visualizations and build data dashboards in Power BI. The main motivation to adopt a free library ebook was its superior quality and the depth and breadth of its coverage from beginner to advanced levels. Most students access the ebook from the O'Riley ebooks library reserve collections.

Advanced Visual Analytics OM 621
Brief Description of course highlights:  Teaches tools and techniques to tidy, transform, and visualize historical data for generating insights and further analyses. Introduces data transformation and wrangling to import, clean, and prepare data for visualization and modeling. Combines information visualization with business analytics to generate insight from data for better business decision-making. Teaches practical applications of developing interactive business reporting tools to support data-driven business and public administration decision-making. Subjects include data preparation, information visualization, dashboard design, and interactive and dynamic business reporting. Catalog Link

Student population: Graduate Supply Chain Management and Business Analytics Students

Learning or student outcomes: 
- Apply business analytics to business and public administration.
- Interpret complex data for information visualization.
-  Demonstrate the insights generated from business analytics by creating interactive and high-quality visualizations.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title:  Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI: How to Design Savvy Dashboards. (1st Edition) Alex Kolokolov and Maxim Zelensky, O’Reilly Media; October 2024 (ISBN-13: 978-1098152789).

Brief Description:  This practical reference teaches how to quickly create visualizations and build data dashboards, and explores different chart types, plus all Power BI standard visuals from default to advanced.

Please provide a link to the resource:  https://csu-csusm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_USM/6j5s84/cdi_globaltitleindex_catalog_428784320

Authors:  Alex Kolokolov and Maxim Zelensky

Student access:   Students have free access to the ebooks from our O'Riley subscription, which they can access by simply using their credentials on the library webpage.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  The print version of this book retails for $59.99

License: Material is copyrighted but available for free through the CSUSM Library.

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option.  This textbook, similar to many other analytical O'Riley books, is a modern textbook with an emphasis on practical applications of Power BI. Additionally, our students can access the electronic version of this resource for no cost through our O'Riley subscription.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?
Based on industry partner recommendation.

Sharing Best Practices:  This is a new course, and thus far, I have not come across any particular practices to share.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned.  This is a new course, and thus far, I have not come across any particular practices to share. 

Instructor Name - Majid Karimi 
I am a Business Analytics professor at the Department of Operations, Supply Chain, and Business Analytics in the College of Business Administration at California State University, San Marcos.  My University page
Please describe the courses/course numbers that you teach.  My main research interest is in the applied decision and data sciences. I collaborated with several companies through research work and consulting to solve business problems in operations management using tools from the fields of predictive analytics, machine learning, the wisdom of crowds, and mathematical optimization. My research has been published in academic journals such as Decision Analysis, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Frontier, the European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Science, Computers and Operations Research, and Supply Chain and Operations Management.
- BUS 324 Introduction to Business Analytics
- OM 422 Visual Analytics
- OM 424 Advanced Business Analytics
- OM 502 Foundations of Operations Management
- OM 613 Descriptive Analytics
- OM 615 Advanced Predictive Analytics
- OM 620 Tools and Technologies for Analytics
- OM 621 Advanced Visual Analytics-
- OM 637 Advanced Project Management
- OM 653 Analytics for Good
- BUS 322 Introduction to Data Analytics

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  I believe learning is a process of forming connections between the new knowledge and what is already understood. For learning to occur, theories, concepts, and constructs must be connected to established facts and ideas. Knowing the main ideas and how they relate to each other conceptually helps learners make sense of new information and use it more efficiently. I also believe learning occurs in a social atmosphere. The understanding developed by students is influenced by what is valued and experienced in their social and cultural environment. I view an educator’s role as an organizer of the learning environment and a facilitator of the learning process. As a business professor and an educator, my goal is to facilitate the process that equips every student with the practical and theoretical tools they need to think and act critically in the business world.