Staff at London Business School (LBS) are all set to enrol as apprentices in the institution’s new data academy.
Thirty-two staff members will be trained by tech startup, Multiverse, in how to apply data skills to improving students’ experience.
Two options will be offered to LBS staff. The first, a 13-month data literacy programme, will explore the core technical skills needed to turn raw data into insight, together with such augmentary skills as building narratives and presenting findings.
The other, a 15-month data fellowship, will provide the apprentices with the skills to clean, analyse and model data, as well as the ability to relay it in narrative form to non-specialists.
Founded in 2016, Multiverse is currently working with more than 300 businesses with the aim of “helping them embrace digital transformation, close skills gaps and develop a diverse talent pipeline”.
Read more: More than half of young people think education should increase focus on data skills
Launching a data academy, said LBS’ chief digital and information officer, Danny Attias, showed that the institution is “constantly using innovative technology and data to enrich the lives of our students.
“Multiverse’s programmes enable us to increase our data skills, and take our data maturity to a whole new level, equipping staff across the school with the data skills they need to thrive in their careers and support our students.”
Data literacy – or the lack thereof – has been an area of increasing concern in recent years. In 2019, the Data Literacy Project published the results of a survey which found that would-be employers were much more concerned with applicants being able to demonstrate practical data skills than clutching a data science degree certificate.
And last year we reported on research from Tableau claiming that data skills development had fallen from the secondary school education agenda during the pandemic, leaving a bigger hole for employers to fill and potentially costing the UK economy up to £2bn annually if not addressed.