California State University, Bakersfield recently held its first Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Hackathon.
The hackathon, put on by the School of Business and Public Administration (BPA) in November, challenged teams of students to solve real-world business challenges, such as running strategic marketing campaigns, forecasting, analyzing business trends and making strategic decisions with data and analytics.
With the hackathon, BPA sought to find a way to include experiential learning in its curriculum, both to create more meaningful connections between students and the Kern County business community and to help its students begin developing critical skills they will need to be successful managers.
“Our first CSUB Digital Marketing and Business Analytics Hackathon was a tremendous success," said BPA Interim Dean Dr. John Stark. "Eleven teams comprised of 40 students were recognized for their winning work. During this competition, these students were pushed to apply and extend the knowledge and skills that they have been developing in our programs. With this type of applied experience, all of these students have greatly benefited and are further along the path in professional growth and development. We are deeply indebted to the faculty organizers and supporters of this event for going above and beyond to ensure that our students are getting the best possible education to support their goals and dreams. I can hardly wait for next year’s competition to see what the creative energy of our students will produce next!”
The digital marketing track of the hackathon provided students the experience of creating a strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for a corporate client or a nonprofit organization. The business analytics track offered students an opportunity to examine how avocado producers, retailers and distributors could improve their strategic decision-making process using retail data. Both tracks were designed to foster intellectual curiosity about utilizing data to make insights, improve processes and develop decision-making skills.
“This is an amazing experiential learning opportunity for our students," said organizing committee member and faculty mentor Dr. Di Wu. "Given that it was our first time organizing this event, we could not have achieved it without the support from BPA, our industrial partners, our colleagues and our students.”
In the digital marketing track, four undergraduate teams placed in the competition and one team earned an honorable mention. In the business analytics track, two undergraduate and two graduate teams placed in the hackathon and one was an honorable mention.
Master's students Justin Bennett, Juan Olivo, Christian Gapper and Jasmine Orozco — whose team earned first place in the business analytics track, said one of the aspects of the hackathon that they really enjoyed was the real-life application of what they've learned in class.
“It was not a textbook example in which Company XYZ sells 1,000 widgets a week. It was a product that we were familiar with and the data was real-world," Bennett said. "We had to determine how to clean the data and manipulate it to provide the answers we were looking for. It was not spoon-fed to us. In addition, we had to do additional research to learn more about the product and the market that it is sold in so that we could provide complete, or as near complete, as possible answers to the questions. This event gave us a taste of what it would be like to have to make these management types of decisions and trying to determine what data is needed to support those choices. Overall, it was a great experience and we really enjoyed the ability to utilize skills that we have been learning while at the same time being able to show our creativity and collaboration skills.”
Elsa Flores, an MBA student, shared her experience of using advanced business intelligence programs such as Tableau and R to analyze the data and report the results.
"I learned how to research and analyze data using R to find out the effects of prices in the avocado industry," she said. "I had never worked or heard of RStudio software before this class, and it was exciting to learn to use it and get a better understanding about marketing, pricing, and data analysis. I am not a programmer or know much about coding, so it was challenging, but I figured if I could learn a little, it would be worth it. I also learned about other very useful software such as Sourcemap and Tableau. [Dr. Zhenning “Jimmy” Xu] is most knowledgeable in R, and he put a lot of his time and effort to teach us. I hope to use R in the future, whether it is to help me in other classes or with my job."
Ashley Brumm, who is from the undergraduate team that won the first-place award of the digital marketing track, commented on her team’s effort and the preparation process.
“Our preparation process for the competition included many class sessions learning about all the pieces we needed to build the best presentation, doing research on our project client to best understand their needs and good teamwork and communication between group members to be our most successful," she said. "Our team was all pretty new to the concept of an experiential learning process, but we believe that it is a very beneficial way for us to learn these valuable career skills. We would like to give special thanks to Professor Xu for putting in so much time and effort to help guide us through this process. He cares a lot about all of his students and giving them the best learning experience.”
Dr. Xu said he enjoyed working with the students over the course of the hackathon.
"I could not be prouder of my student teams who have demonstrated great analytical skills, teamwork and critical thinking in tackling the task,” he said.
The judging panel for this event included Management Professor, Dr. Yong Choi, Celeste Porter, CFO of Tasteful Selections LLC, and Robert Davis, Founder & CEO at KOR Unlimited.
Here is the full list of winning teams:
Digital Marketing Track (undergraduate)
First Place: Ashley Brumm, Courtney Linton and Bryan Mayani
Second Place (two teams): Betzua Rafik, Asalea Rosales and Karina Saucedo; Marissa Delgado, Emmanuel Morales and Tanya Wilson
Third Place: John Durwin, Alonzo Espinoza and Eric Fuentes
Honorable Mention: Carlos Camarillo, Liliana Chavez, Angel Perez and Anthony Rosas
Business Analytics Track
Graduate
First Place: Justin Bennett, Juan Olivo, Christian Gapper and Jasmine Orozco
Second Place: Amalia Calderon, Johanna Fisher, Elsa Flores and Lulijeta Tupi
Undergraduate
First Place: Ryan Bianchi, Adrian Larios, Alonra Monreal and Alexis Ruiz
Second Place: Denice Aguilera, Jazmin A. Barrita Barrita, Sammy Cortez and Nanthiyaporn Manorom
Third Place: Fatemah Alrasheed, Ryan Brimer, Blake Kunzler and Ashley Puentes
Honorable Mention: Terecita Beltran, Luis Cedeno, Shivneet Nirwan and Gabriel Valdovinos
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