Welcome back Nassir Ibrahim! - Qlik Educator Ambassador Class of 2023

[Pankaj_Muthe]

We are excited to welcome Nassir Ibrahim to the Qlik Educator Ambassador Class of 2023! 

[Pankaj_Muthe]

This week we introduce you to one of our returning Educator Ambassadors for 2023, Nassir Ibrahim, a lecturer at Birmingham City University. This is Nassir's second year as an Educator Ambassador. Nassir integrated Qlik Sense and the Academic Program into his teaching in the last year or so, however he immediately saw the benefits to his students and their employability.

Nassir introduced Qlik to his final year undergraduate students on his Data Intelligence module, having heard about Qlik from a colleague and Qlik Educator Ambassador. He explained “what I found from using various tools, is Qlik has an edge over other tools, because of its user friendliness and because of its training and learning materials online.”

Nassir, like many Educators, wanted to incorporate Qlik Sense into his teaching but he had not yet used it himself, “Qlik has excellent training resources, [some] of the best I have ever seen so I had to become familiar with the technology and know how to use it myself. There are the video training materials you have; they are excellent... It’s about becoming a student and learning yourself in order to help others learn.”

Many Educators who join the Academic Program are unsure of how they can incorporate Qlik sense into their teaching, Nassir found that the best way to do this was by utilizing the interactive videos we offer. “Some of your videos are quite long but generally they are 30 to 40 minutes and I think that’s perfect. We would structure our classes with breaking down some of the longer videos. They would have 20 minutes of the tutorial and then the students would do the exercises themselves, because the students benefit more from doing”.

One of Nassir's goals with implementing Qlik Sense into his teaching was to support student employability. “The job market is asking for knowledge of Qlik now and by doing well in this module [students] could show that they have a good understanding of the functionalities of Qlik. There was one student who graduated last summer, and he is now working in a company as a software developer and they use Qlik.”

“This was a proud moment because all of the resources you shared with me, were actually required in the job market. It showed that we were preparing our students for the industry world adequately…all it takes is one student to show that the work we had done was worthwhile”.

Regardless of proud moments such as this, Nassir is still determined to reach those students who still might not be as engaged with Qlik. “In the next Academic Year I think I will they will have to present their work back to us and demonstrate how they’ve used the tool to stretch them a bit more”. Nassir wants to cover the fundamentals but then have the students explore the tool for themselves as well. “What can they discover about the tool that they had not anticipated previously? only when they start to explore and imagine some of the things that they could do with the tool will they be able to say hey, this is actually something which we could use to solve our problem in ways that we didn't think of in the beginning”.

When Nassir isn’t teaching, he likes to spend time working on his own personal development, weight training and trying to beat his best time on the racetrack! Nassir also enjoys developing scientific toolkits for business decision-making and that automate business tasks!

If you are interested in learning how the Academic Program can support your students with their data analytics and employability skills, you can learn more by visiting qlik.com/academicprogram.