Explore Resources for Teaching in the Classroom

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Incorporate Tableau for Teaching curriculum and learning resources in a class environment.
Describe how teachers can use Tableau Cloud.
List the available TFT self-serve support platforms and TFT licensing support.

Lay the Groundwork

Teaching data analytics starts with the basics. Students need to know how to ask good questions, understand what data is, and how to interpret it. While we offer many different types of curricula, each has a core ethos of teaching these fundamental data skills.

The first step in working with the curriculum is picking the one that works best for you.

Teach with Our Core Curriculum

The core curriculum is full 8- to 10-week courses on particular topics related to Tableau. Topics include: Data Literacy One, Data Literacy Two (visual best practices), Tableau Fundamentals, and Data Visualization. Core curriculum resources include weekly slide decks, starter and solution Tableau workbooks, a comprehensive teacher guide, and a student guide.

You can teach the core curriculum content in its entirety or break it down into smaller parts to fit your needs. For example, you can combine the core curriculum, Data Literacy, Tableau Fundamentals, and Data Visualization into a larger course and teach it across an entire semester.

Teach with Our Short Courses

Short courses present topics in 1 to 4 weeks using an asynchronous format. Topics include: Getting Started with Artificial Intelligence, Data Fundamentals for AI, and Get Started with Tableau Cloud in the Classroom. While these short courses can be taught in an in-person format, they are structured for hybrid learning.

The material for each topic is presented on Trailhead, which lets the learner absorb the content when they are able. To complement the content on Trailhead, we provide a set of discussion questions for each topic. Class discussions can take place in person in the classroom or virtually through the learning management system.

Teach with Our Case Studies

Case studies provide a data set and prompt to introduce Tableau or to use as a final group project. Each case study provides background information about the topic, a data dictionary, a guided prompt, and an additional open-ended prompt for the students to practice their new skills.

You can choose to teach the case studies using the guided prompts, or use the case studies with minimal direction, asking the students to come up with their own ideas and solutions.

Teach with Tableau Cloud

Tableau Cloud is a fully hosted, cloud-based, enterprise-grade solution on the world’s #1 analytics platform. Using Tableau Cloud, teachers and students alike can explore data sets and create, author, and publish visualizations directly on the web from anywhere in the world.

Tableau Cloud on a screen showing recents and recommendations

When you add students as active users on a Tableau Cloud site and give them the Creator role, they can download and activate Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder through login-based license management (LBLM). This gives them the option to use the Tableau Desktop application on their local machine, in addition to web-authoring on Tableau Cloud.

Students working on a local copy of a workbook can publish and share their work and collaborate with others on the same Tableau Cloud site by uploading workbooks to the site. Learn more about how this feature works in the Tableau Cloud instructor guide in the Resources section.

A full feature comparison of Tableau Cloud and Desktop is available on the Tableau website, Web Authoring and Tableau Desktop Feature Comparison.

Tableau Cloud Site Owner and Administrator Roles

As an instructor, you’re eligible to receive one complimentary Tableau Cloud site for teaching purposes. Once you provision and activate a Tableau Cloud site using your email address, your email address is automatically tied to the Cloud site with the role of site owner and site administrator.

While there can only be one site owner, there can be more than one site administrator. We suggest you assign a teaching assistant or IT admin the site administrator role.

Here’s a little more about these roles.

Site Owners

Activate the Cloud site via a unique URL received by email invitation. This includes naming the Cloud site and selecting the closest server location.
Request any changes needed for the site such as name, number of users, or MFA reset.
Renew the Cloud site each year through the TFT request process. If the site has been expired for longer than 1 month, the site will go into a deprecated state and a new site will need to be issued.

Site Administrators

Add students as users and assign roles and permissions to them.
Set up the site; for example, manage groups, projects, workbooks, and data sources (including connection information) for the site.
Maintain the site; for example, remove users who are no longer students, remove stale data.

When you teach on Tableau Cloud your users have the ability to access a Cloud site from anywhere with a web connection. It’s also the best Tableau product for group work and collaborative assignments.

Where to Go for Support

There are a number of resources to help you on your Tableau teaching journey. Start by reviewing the Trailhead Help article, Tableau for Teaching Program Learning Resources for Academic Instructors, for an overview.

Then explore help, knowledge base articles, and community support on these platforms.

Tableau Help: Get the help resources you need for common challenges with and questions about Tableau products.
Tableau Knowledge Base: Consult troubleshooting articles, product help guides, whitepapers, and more.
Tableau Community Forums: This is where the Tableau Community members help each other in a friendly and respectful way. Raise and answer questions to become an active member of the Community.

For TFT licensing support, members of the program can also contact tft@tableau.com (expect a 3 to 5 business day response time).

Now that you’ve learned all about the TFT program you’re ready to complete the last quiz and earn your badge. Want to know more about Tableau and the community? Check out the Tableau Community: Quick Look and Data Storytelling with Tableau Public modules, or complete the Tableau Hands-on Challenges trailmix next.

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