​Unit 3: Data analytics
Overview
Area of Study 1 provides students with a broad grounding in data storage and analytical and presentation skills. Students will demonstrate these skills through teacher-provided solution requirements and designs that develop solutions to present findings. These skills will be called upon in Area of Study 2, the first part of the School-assessed Task, where students will propose a research question, collect and analyse data and design a solution. This involves the analysis and design stages of the problem-solving methodology.
Area of Study 1: Data analytics
In this area of study students develop the necessary knowledge and skills to produce data visualisations, based on teacher-provided solution requirements and designs. It is important that teachers provide activities and time for students to understand data-related concepts and use of software tools.
Teachers are required to select suitable software tools that all students will study as part of this area of study. A Software tools and functions document is available on the Data Analytics study page that details the requirements of the selected
software tools and functions to be used.
As part of the assessment task, teachers are required to provide students with the solution requirements and designs. Students are not required to generate their own designs for the data visualisations they develop. There are a range of avenues for providing students with opportunities to interpret solution requirements and designs. These include: small case studies, explicit data requirements statements and partial or full designs of a database, spreadsheet and data visualisations. These designs should be limited to those listed in the relevant key knowledge and include: data dictionaries, tables, charts, input forms, queries and reports.
The teaching of data analytics should include a variety of approaches that may include, but are not limited to: teacher-led tutorials, exercises, online learning, reverse engineering of solutions, providing partial information (e.g. providing a query and output but no source data, or providing source data and output but no query) and the interpretation of existing solutions to discover findings.
Teaching and learning activities could be designed as a project including activities to import raw data from a repository into a database, create queries and export this filtered data into a spreadsheet, from which data can be manipulated, sorted, grouped and analysed into a format from which data visualisations can be produced.
When developing assessment criteria or a marking scheme, it is recommended teachers use the VCAA performance descriptors for
Unit 3 Outcome 1.
Area of Study 2: Data analytics: analysis and design
In this area of study, students will develop the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to propose a research question, formulate a project plan, collect and analyse data and develop solution designs for creating effective infographics or dynamic data visualisations. It is important that teachers provide suitable time for students to complete part 1 of the SAT.
The teaching of this area of study should include a variety of approaches that may include activities for students using simple design briefs to build their ability to locate data repositories for different scenarios and contexts. The practical nature of a design brief allows students to understand data requirements, constraints and scope in a real-world context and will help them to be able to propose their own research question. Students can be provided with incomplete designs that require them to update or demonstrate an end solution, and for which they can reverse engineer some designs.
Students have the opportunity to choose between infographics or dynamic data visualisations. Infographics are graphical representations of complex data that, in many cases, are static but often contain a range of visualisation charts. Dynamic data visualisations are where data changes based on user input (e.g. clicking on a line making it stand out in a graph) or they are in a movie-style format where data values change over time providing viewers with a journey.
It is recommended that students commence the SAT before the first term holidays by which time, they need to have an idea of a suitable research question and know where they will collect and analyse suitable data. Students should have developed a simple project plan and have decided whether they will be developing infographics or dynamic data visualisations.