ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF LEARNING ACTIVITIES THROUGH BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TYPE TOOLS

Business intelligence techniques and tools are used more and more in all the domains of human activity, being able to bring to light new information from the volumes of data that are gathered from the activities carried on. In the educational domain, as in other fields of activity, business intelligence tools can be employed with success. The current paper aims to analyze the impact of learning activities, based on data available related to a number of courses that were carried on over a period of three years (October 2010 - September 2013). The large majority of the courses was carried on through a European funded project and was aimed to develop the entrepreneurship competences of the participants through relatively short term trainings (24 hours spread over several days - 20 hours theoretical activities and 4 hours practical activities). Related to these courses, the available database consists of information related to the participant's background and the courses followed by them, with the outcomes of the courses (for example businesses started after graduation). Among the analysis that can be performed based on the available database are: participants starting a business by age; participants starting a business by field of study / level of education; participants starting a business by region / county of residence/ place of residence; participants starting a business by status on the labour market. The conclusions of the study can be useful to different learning organizations that carry on entrepreneurship and other training courses in order to optimize their activities and better select the participants to maximize the impact of the learning programs they are offering.