Planning, Establishing and Leading a Learning Community for Building MS Power BI Skills in the Case Organization

Abstract

The focus of this study is to plan and implement a learning community aimed at developing Power BI skills among its participants. The case organization is Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, one of Finland’s largest universities offering a broad range of educational programs.

The study followed the Applied action research approach. The first step involved reviewing existing knowledge on types of learning communities, their stages of development, successful factors and principles, as well as examining cases of implemented learning communities in companies and higher education institutions. The current state analysis investigated the presence related internal practices within the case organization, as well as the hopes and expectations of potential participants, and the needs and limitations of the organization. In the analysis part, the study revealed a high demand for building Power BI skills among students as 40 participants registered for the learning community. Additionally, it revealed that learning communities are recognized as a desirable direction for development within the case company. The case company hopes that learning communities will allow for a quick response to the demand in competence building in different areas, and wanted to explore the scenario when the learning communities are initiated and led by the students themselves. Additionally, the analysis revealed the stakeholder’s expectations for the Power BI Learning community to have a continuous lifecycle.

The outcome of the thesis is an implementation plan for establishing, leading, and developing a learning community, done on the example of the “Learning community of Power BI”. This plan was first crafted and then, after launching and conducing the first iteration of the learning community, it was revised and evaluated by the key stakeholders. Thus, the validation stage was done based on the results from the implementation. The impact of the thesis relates to assisting the case organization in establishing its first learning community, led not by staff, but a Master’s student.