ULaval MBA students analyzing for a good cause: the One Drop Foundation

This fall, students enrolled in ULaval graduate-level course will not only have the opportunity to learn digital analytics concepts, through hands on assignments their work will also contribute to a great cause. The One Drop Foundation, initiated by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, has accepted to “open the books” of their onedrop.org website analytics to allow students to cut their teeth on a real environment.

A different approach to digital analytics education

It took me six years to complete my eBusiness MBA. Six years of hard work while working, starting my business, creating WASP, speaking at web analytics events, doing local meetups – oh, and caring for my family! Strong of my own experience of online learning, and having tutored dozens of courses for the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics, I conceived this 15 weeks course so it would address digital analytics from a managerial perspective. By the end of the semester, and thanks to other courses of the MBA program, those students have the strongest academic background there could be. Theory is good, but add hands on experience and it becomes priceless – and that’s where non-profits like One Drop really make a difference. While the first short assignment asks for a simple one metric analysis (see the fist post on the math behind the stats), the final assignment puts students in the shoes of a real analyst role – real-world scenario, defining business goals, messy data and even the harsh reality of constraints and limitations. As I like to say – if our job was easy it wouldn’t be so much fun!

The course is actually only available online (in French),  therefore, we’re in the process of finding a university in the US or Canada where this course could be offered in English, online. You can contact me if your university would be interested.

For French-speaking students, priority is given to those enrolled in programs, but there are also a number of open seats for those who just want to take this course. See ULaval for additional information.

About the One Drop foundation

One Drop – an initiative of Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil – fights poverty by supporting access to water and raising individual and community awareness of the need to mobilize so that safe water is accessible to all, in sufficient quantity, today and tomorrow.

Yesterday, we held what we dubbed our first web analytics unconference – 45  analysts, managers, consultants and vendors got together to tackled nine topics related to the field of digital analytics, optimization and management. The reason I’m raising this here is we were lucky to hold the event at Cirque du Soleil heardquarters in Montreal. As a thank you, we asked sponsors and participants to contribute to One Drop – we raised enough money to offer two water reservoirs used to captures rainwater and reduce farmers’ dependence on irregular rainfalls and several water filters.

Check out One Drop and drop a few dollars to help out!