Assignment 4: Data Analysis and Presentation

IS101Y/CMSC104Y: First Year IT

Assignment 4
Data Analysis and Presentation
Draft due October 26, 2012 Presentation due November 1, 2012 Your task for this assignment is to use common tools to anaylze and present data about technology majors here at UMBC. Your intended audience is the COEIT Dean, Provost, and President of UMBC (OK, so they won't actually be there, but you should tailor your presentation to be appropriate for them). Your goal it to brief them on what it's like to be a technology major at UMBC, using data to support your points. Present the supporting data in a visual form (ie, charts and graphs). This is a group assignment. You will complete it with your team, with each team member contributing to the result. Each team will turn in one joint document and give a joint presentation in class on November 1. A draft of your presentation is due October 26. You will receive feedback on presentation choices about content, analysis, and style.

The Data

The website of the UMBC Office of Institutional Research (http://www.umbc.edu/oir) contains a wealth of information about UMBC. This assignment will focus on information found in the Databook (listed in the menu at the left of the screen). The website provides data in .pdf format. On Blackboard, some of the same tables are available in a CSV (Comma Separated Value) format. You should be able to load the CSV files directly into Excel. Or you can choose to create Excel files manually from the information in the .pdf files. You may use whichever method you prefer. In particular, you will look at information about:

Undergraduate Enrollments -- under "Student Term Enrollments" tab, table by "by Primary Plan - Race/Ethnicity and Gender". You'll want the tables for the last five years that are available ('07-'11).
Undergraduate Average Time to Degree - New Freshmen -- under "Degrees Awarded". Use the 2011 table.
Undergraduate Cumulative GPA and Honors Status -- under "Degrees Awarded". Use the 2011 table.

The Questions

Each team will construct a presentation about one COEIT major and one demographic group, showing trends in each and comparing them to averages of all UMBC students. Each team will draw their major and demographic group assignments randomly in class. Your job is to examine the available data and present it in an informative graph.

For your assigned major, show the enrollment trend over the last five years. Include the time to degree and average cumulative GPA for the most recent year available. Compare to UMBC overall enrollment trends and time to degree and cumulative GPA.

For your assigned demographic group, show the enrollment trend (expressed as a percentage) in each COEIT major over the last five years. Compare to UMBC overall enrollment trends for your demographics group.

The Presentation

Each team will create and deliver a seven minute presentation of their analysis to the class. Your presentation should include 2-3 slides on each of your assigned major and demographic group. Your slides should include a mix of qualitative information (ie, what is it like to be in in that group) and quantitative (ie, graphs and charts showing the numerical evidence for your qualitative assessment). Your last slide should suggest 2-3 actions that UMBC can take to improve the experience/education of technology majors and 2-3 questions/issues that you think warrant further investigation. Each member of the group should present at least one slide. We will strictly enforce the seven minute time limit. `

Additional Exercise

Use Access to create a database of student information and execute queries.

Create a new Access database. Call it Student Data Base. Create a table in the database called Students. Use the following fields in your table. Define each data type and the number of characters each should be while creating the table.

Field Name Data Type
ID Number
Name
Major
Year
On Campus / Commuter
Maryland / Out of State
Determine the primary key of the table. A primary key is the value in a database that makes each entry unique.

Field Name	Data Type
ID Number
Name
Major
Year
On Campus / Commuter
Maryland / Out of State

Create a Form for the student table. Use the form to input the following date:

ID Number	Name	Major	Year	On Campus / Commuter	Maryland / Out of State
RU21120	Gary Weinrib	IS	Freshman	Commuter	Out of State
SH10010	Neil Pratt	CS	Freshman	Commuter	Out of State
AP97392	Gus Lamp	CE	Freshman	On Campus	Maryland
CE59876	Philip Gates	Undecided	HS Senior	Commuter	Maryland
IU39826	Jake James	CS	Freshman	On Campus	Maryland
AD12123	Gob Bluth	IS	Freshman	Commuter	Maryland
BB29840	Peter Rojas	CS	Freshman	On Campus	Maryland
SS00187	Tim Fletcher	IS	Freshman	On Campus	Out of State
AP53877	Patricia Wills	Undecided	HS Senior	Commuter	Maryland
PL09234	George Wade	CS	Freshman	On Campus	Out of State
ES04017	Lisa Mack	IS	Freshman	Commuter	Maryland

Close and save the table.
Create and save the following queries:
- Name, ID, and Major of all commuters
- Name, ID, and Major of all on campus students from out of state.
- ID and Major of all HS Senior Commuters
- Name and Major of each commuting freshman
Create a document (pdf) of all of your queries and your database. You can take a screen capture of your work.

Resources

Access Tutorials can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/simonsezittraining/videos?query=access.

What to turn in

Submit your presentation slides and database with queries using Blackboard.

Go to Blackboard and click on Course Documents
Find the Data Presentations Assignment and choose Submit to upload your project. Be sure to use attach the files, rather than just including them in the text window.
Name the files groupname_datapresent.ppt (Example: cake_datapresent.ppt) and groupname_datapresent.accdb.