This session shares a practical approach that removes both barriers using only Google Sheets, a relatable dataset, and an AI assistant. In a single lesson, students move through all four levels of analytics — describing what happened, diagnosing why, predicting what's next, and deciding what to do about it. With just a few simple steps they build a working prediction model and meet the real ideas behind machine learning, minus the jargon.

Speaker


Dr Hua Jin is a Lecturer in Business Analytics at the University of Bristol Business School and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and is known for making data and analytics approachable for students with little technical background, using everyday tools such as Excel and Google Sheets to keep students engaged.

She has contributed to a funded teaching project that introduced an AI chatbot to support student learning and enhance their experience. 

Who can benefit from this talk

Subjects such as Business Analytics and many 'harder' topics, can feel intimidating before a student has even started. The question I kept asking was simple: how do we get students to engage with something difficult? What I found is that if you start from a case they already know and care about, the difficulty quietly disappears — the lesson feels less like work and more like play, and students learn real concepts without realising it.