Welcome Daniel E. O ‘Leary-Qlik Educator Ambassador for 2024!

[Pankaj_Muthe]

I feel pleased to introduce our new Educator Ambassador for 2024, Daniel E. O ‘Leary from the University of Southern California. He lives in the Los Angeles, California.

Daniel O’Leary is a senior member of the faculty in the Leventhal School of Accounting, at the University of Southern California (USC).   Dan is a full professor who teaches courses on data and analytics and accounting information systems. This is Dan’s first year as a Qlik Academic Program Educator Ambassador.

 Dan introduced Qlik into Leventhal’s curriculum as part of the addition of a new master’s degree in accounting focused on data and analytics, in the 2018 – 2019 school year.  As part of that new degree, USC’s Leventhal School of Accounting worked with their different stakeholders to help determine the program’s content.  Those stakeholders included one of the big 4 accounting firms, which asked that Qlik be included as one of the tools built into the coursework, because of its importance to them and their clients.

 Dan created two new courses to get students the knowledge that they needed to be able to use data and analytics, including artificial intelligence, business intelligence, databases, enterprise resource planning systems, robots and text mining.  The course innovation was not just content, but also includes substantial hands-on experiences, as Dan flips the classroom to engage the students.

 After careful consideration, Dan elected to use Qlik in his class to capture the importance of cloud computing and cloud-based business intelligence (BI).  Cloud computing also facilitates a classroom in which students have both windows-based and Apple Mac-based computing.  Using cloud-based software eliminates the problems of finding software that not only works in both environments but also works the same way.   With cloud-based software, students see things done the same way in both environments.

 In Dan’s teaching, he works to integrate Qlik with different software.  For example, in addition to Qlik, Dan uses other software, including RapidMiner and ChatGPT in his teaching. As part of his teaching focus, he teaches students to use other software, not only by using and understanding other software, but by integrating their understanding across different software.  For example, projects using RapidMiner are expected to be integrated with Qlik.  Similarly, when working with Qlik, students are encouraged to use ChatGPT to support their work with Qlik, providing insights for using Qlik and for data and analytics in general.

Perhaps most importantly, the students feel like they benefit from learning Qlik.  As part of his teaching, Dan asks the students which assignments, tools and speakers that the students enjoyed the most and found the most important.  This year, 60% of the students listed the classwork with Qlik.  As noted by one student “I found the Qlik assignment the most rewarding.”  Another student noted, “Qlik’s interface is user-friendly and easy to understand.”  As noted by still another student, “I enjoyed Qlik … the most.”

 Dan’s use of Qlik in the classroom also has paid off for students on the job market.  This last term one of his students found an analyst job because of her classroom work with Qlik.

We hope to engage with Daniel during his journey as the Qlik Educator Ambassador and gain more insights about his use of Qlik at USC.

For more information about our Ambassador Program, please visit: qlik.com/us/company/academic-program/ambassadors

Educators and students looking for free analytics software and training can apply to the Academic Program by visiting qlik.com/us/company/academic-program