Samenvatting

Data has been deemed fundamental to the digital transformation in society and businesses. It can influence all spheres of a company. Data-driven insights enable companies to make better decisions and thus to become more competitive in the market. The demand for data-literate employees and citizens needs to be supplied through the current generation of students. To help meet this demand, this research aims to better understand the status quo of data literacy in today’s higher education and investigates how students’ data literacy can be improved during their Bachelor learning trajectories. Four specific studies were carried out to define and distinguish the key concepts, explore the demand for data literate employees in the job market, examine students’ data literacy levels, and experiment with a possible method to enhance students’ data competences. The results drawn from our empirical research reveal that our current education does not yet adequately equip our students with the level of data literacy required by the real business world. Moreover, the findings demonstrate the effectiveness of practice-oriented, data-driven research to enhance students’ overall data competences and lead to a win-win-win situation for the main stakeholders. The contributions and recommendations based on this research are also discussed.