KUALA LUMPUR: Adobe announced the Adobe Analytics curriculum for education, a global programme that supports the future workforce with in-demand data science skills.
"Adobe is driving digital transformation for major brands in every sector, and the one thing we consistently hear is how difficult it is to hire the right talent," said Adobe's vice president for Experience Cloud Platform and Products, Amit Ahuja.
As part of the next generation of the Adobe Education Exchange, educators and students will be able to use Adobe Analytics — customer data analytics platform — for free and get access to course curriculum with hands-on activities.
An extension of the Adobe Creative Campus programme, which advances digital literacy through access to Adobe Creative Cloud in the classroom, students will now be able to learn how to use data to drive business decisions and gain skills for careers spanning data science to marketing and product management.
"Digital literacy is paramount for students in today's digital economy, and this programme meets the needs of today's employers while exposing students to careers they may not have considered," added Ahuja.
The programme was developed through the Adobe Analytics Challenge, which was launched in 2005. The popular competition gives college students a chance to work with real data to solve business challenges, from companies such as Nike, Major League Baseball and Sony Playstation.
"Adobe is a widely used platform in the world of design, we have also introduced Adobe Analytics in our classes and look forward to Adobe's added services to enhance our students' learning experiences — as it is important that we ensure our graduates are more than capable in navigating these programmes when they enter the workforce," said Taylor's University's head of Design School, Faculty of Innovation & Technology, Dr Pouline Koh.
Past participants have used the experience to land careers at The Home Depot, Boston Consulting Group, Amazon, and non-profits like Learning Forward. The success of the event drove interest from higher education instructors, who wanted to include elements of the Challenge in their coursework.
Professors from institutions including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Utah, and University of Michigan partnered with Adobe to develop the curriculum, helping shape the programme to ensure it is easy to implement among any college or university.
"The pandemic reshaped economies and exposed consumers to a digital-only reality, pushing organisations to transform themselves on a dime and seek new types of talent," said Professor of Marketing at University of Wisconsin- Madison, Neeraj Arora while David Eccles Chair Professor at the University of Utah, Paul Hu believes that digital experiences is absolutely crucial for corporations, government agencies, and small businesses alike as "...data is a valuable asset in today's digital economy, and Adobe Analytics curriculum for education will play a major role in helping students acquire skill sets that significantly broaden their career opportunities and development".
The programme has four core modules that can be incorporated into any curriculum. Participants get access to a sandbox environment, which allows students to use Adobe Analytics with rich demo data.
It is meant to be self-paced, and instructors can pick and choose any of the modules to incorporate into their coursework. The modules include data collection, strategy and architecture, metrics, as well as workspace analysis.
Organisations have to connect data from different sources and across departments such as marketing, customer service, sales, human resources and more — all of which require proper governance and privacy controls and in the Data Collection module, students will learn the fundamentals of data collection, warehousing and cleaning, as well as implementation.
Under the Data Strategy and Architecture module, students can combine metrics across consumer touchpoints for instance, to understand how promotional offers online drive in-store foot traffic. Once data is collected, teams have to set up a data structure to make the data consumable across an organisation. It also gives students a chance to define key performance indicators and shape how goals are structured and achieved.
The Standard Metrics and Functionality module focuses on reporting and how data is presented to an organisation at large, spanning functions such as marketing, product development, eCommerce, and design. Students will continue to layer meaning into numbers and showcase how insights can drive real action.
The fourth module is Analysis Workspace Fundamentals, a unique drag-and-drop interface in Adobe Analytics. Inspired by Photoshop, users can curate different data sets and take on a detective role in uncovering data anomalies and other insights. This module provides students an opportunity to curate data, collaborate with others, produce new visualisations and uncover insights that advance business objectives.
For more information on Adobe Analytics curriculum for education, visit https://experienceleague.adobe.com