Promoting Evidence-Based Decision Making Practices to Develop the Entrepreneurial Mindset Enabled by Microsoft Power BI Desktop

The entrepreneurial mindset is defined as the inclination to discover, evaluate, and exploit opportunities. One approach to developing the entrepreneurial mindset is through evidence-based decision-making, which has the potential to lower costs, improve quality of life, and even save lives by understanding learning patterns and trends related to data, in general, and big data, specifically. As a result, data science solutions are being increasingly deployed in the business world, and the growth of publicly accessible data provides a significant opportunity to transform educational efforts related to data science. This is of particular importance to the engineering and computer science fields given the increasing focus on big data and evidence-based decicision making. As such, the purpose of this study is to report on one approach to developing the entrepreneurial mindset through integrating evidence-based decision making into the engineering and technology classroom using Microsoft Power BI Desktop, a freely available tool released by Microsoft in September 2013. The study was assessed using a mixed methods approach, including a rubric to measure demonstration of the entrepreneurial mindset and metacognitive reflection to better understand student awareness of learning. The findings were categorized into two key themes related to each high performing and low performing groups. The high performers (1) expressed more concerns related to the "big picture" and "critical thinking" based challenges primarily focused on the research and solution, and (2) articulated coping habits and methods used to overcome stress. The low performers (1) highlighted challenges related to time management and procrastination and (2) confusion about project requirements and how to do the required tasks (which is believed to be attributed to missing classes). Lessons learned and recommendations are provided.

I. Introduction

How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? ~ Joseph Aoun