Abstract:

Big data analytics has become an essential managerial skill. The worldwide demand for business analysts and managers, who can use big data effectively to make better decisions, grows exponentially. Consequently, business schools worldwide have started redesigning their study programmes, emphasizing data science and big data analytics. However, despite the growing number of new data science courses in business schools, less attention is paid to designing appropriate teaching and learning environments. Unlike the students of science and engineering schools, the majority of the students in business schools are less likely to become data scientists with in-depth technical skills in computer science or machine learning. Instead, they would become extensive data users, such as managers, administrators, policymakers and citizen data scientists. In other words, they will mainly require the skills of asking the right questions on data and making data-driven decisions rather than creating sophisticated machine learning models. Thus, the pedagogical design of appropriate data science teaching and learning environments for business schools is fundamental to achieving the desired learning outcomes by aligning the right content with suitable delivery methods. This paper presents a constructive review of literature aiming at exploring the possibility of using gamified and cloud-based learning environments in business schools to transfer data science skills to learners. Gamification has been a widespread technique in education, which enables the learners to learn by doing in an entertaining environment. On the other hand, cloud computing is an emerging technology that enables geographically dispersed learners to engage with a learning environment remotely. Especially with the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic that limit physical interactions and the emerging tendencies among students to use Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), cloud computing seems to be a promising technology in creating teaching and learning environments. The review presented in this paper adopts the bibliometric research methodology, in which a set of keyword-based search strings are used on Google Scholar to filter out relevant publications on the topic. The paper finally presents the insights drawn from the review, which would be helpful to the action researchers in data science education, to design gamified and cloud-based teaching and learning environments.

Keywords:

Data Science, Gamification, Business School.