Time: 11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.
Track: IT in teaching and learning, projects, workshops, demonstrations or tutorials
Audience: General audience
This presentation aims to guide the audience in crafting engaging and informative data narratives. It will cover the entire data journey, from data collection and exploration to cleaning, description, analysis, and ultimately, communicating the story behind the data. I will delve into the key elements of storytelling, including the data, the narrative, and visualization, illustrating how they synergize to create concise, informative, and captivating messages that resonate with your audience. The audience will learn the importance of a well-planned data story, which includes learning who your audience will be, what they should know and how to best deliver that information.
What’s a data story? It’s the art of conveying data not merely as numbers or charts, but as a narrative that that humans can easily comprehend. The goal of a data story is to provide context to help explain the importance of the data and help communicate any key messages you are trying to relay through your data story. Effective data storytellers excel at distilling their findings into a core set of information that conveys the message in a direct and concise manner.
Why tell a data story? Because stories are memorable and people easily relate to stories. Stories have historically been told for informing, updating, and conveying facts. In today's world, storytelling is more vital than ever, serving to persuade, sell ideas, convince, recommend, and entertain. When we weave a story around data, our aim is not merely comprehension but ensuring that the central ideas resonate and endure in the minds of our audience.
Speaker’s Background: I am currently an assistant professor of IT Management at the Ted Rogers School of Management. Previously, I held a position as a professor at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. Currently, I teach an award-winning course on Data Visualization (ITM 752 Data Visualization). I developed this course in 2017 and have taught it in various formats at different universities, including MBA students (class size of 25), graduate students (class size of 30), and undergraduate students (class size of up to 80).
The primary aim of the course is to teach visual theory to help students create effective graphs and visual stories, while enhancing their critical thinking and communication skills. It provides students with the foundations and principles of data visualization to create meaningful displays of quantitative and qualitative data, facilitate managerial decision-making, and present insights clearly to engage their audience. Throughout the course, students learn visual critique and techniques for persuasion and effective storytelling through numerous examples of comparison and contrast. They also engage in hands-on projects with Tableau to explore various aspects of data visualization.
Core objectives of the presentation and envisioned activities during the session: In the first half of the session, I will share the fundamentals of creating effective data stories. The objectives are to help the audience develop an understanding of:
- Visual design theory and key techniques to create effective data stories.
- Effective uses of common chart and data types for presentation and storytelling.
I will also present practical visualization examples and review key visual analytics techniques using Tableau to help the audience gain practical understanding. Academics who attend the workshop can integrate these exercises into their teaching. In this half of the session, I will discuss the importance of telling truthful data stories (or developing the ability to identify unethical or manipulative data stories) and how these skills could be supported by teaching core concepts of visual theory and data visualization. I will also discuss potential skills that can be gained through this education, such as effective data exploration through visual thinking, effective communication, telling effective stories, detecting errors and bias, and so on.
The second half of the session will be dedicated to sharing my knowledge and experience in teaching Data Visualization. I will highlight the importance of teaching Data Visualization and integrating the concepts of visual design into information systems and data analytics curricula. During this part of the session, I will facilitate a discussion to explore ideas, techniques, and methodologies to advance our teaching and educational curricula and learn from the audience’s experiences. I will also promote incorporating these concepts into other classes at TRSM (e.g., marketing, HR management, accounting, and finance) to advance our teaching.
I believe this presentation is useful for both the IT and academic community. Students will develop awareness of the importance of the topic, and my colleagues and other IT community members will gain inspiration to integrate some of these ideas into their work or teaching.
Presenter: Burcu Bulgurcu, Ted Rogers School of Management (TMU)
Presenter biography
Professor Burcu Bulgurcu (Ph.D., M.Sc., Sauder School of Business, the University of British Columbia, M.Sc., B.Sc. Informatics Institute, Middle East Technical University) joined the Department of Information Technology Management of the Ted Rogers School of Management in 2019. Formerly, she was a professor of Information Systems in the Carroll School of Management, Boston College.
Dr. Bulgurcu’s research and teaching interests are cybersecurity, information privacy, social media and business analytics, and data visualization. Her research aims to provide guidance in the development of data protection and privacy preserving technologies, effective security and privacy policies, awareness, and training programs. She also explores the implications of social media use and privacy on creativity and innovation. The results of her research have been published in the Financial Times Top 50 journals and leading conferences, including a highly impactful paper published in MIS Quarterly with over 2700 citations, MIT Sloan Management Review, the Journal of MIS, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, the International, Americas, and Hawaii International Conferences on IS. Bulgurcu’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and she has received numerous academic honours and awards.
She teaches a variety of classes on IT Management and Strategy, including a new elective class on Data Visualization, which she has designed and developed as part of the Data Science and Analytics programs in business schools.