Lesson and Resources: Data Cleansing in Excel Fairy Tale Challenge

This is a practical Microsoft Excel data-cleansing 60 minute lesson with a fun fairy-tale twist. Students tackle genuine IT and data-management skills while working with deliberately messy and corrupted fairy-tale data. The humour and fantasy theme provide an engaging context for what could otherwise be a fairly dry topic.

The activities are designed to be suitable for all ages, and can be used with young people, GCSE students, post-16 learners, adults and vocational learners.

Learning objectives

Students will:

• explain what data means;
• identify possible errors in data and the problems these may cause;
• understand how to organise data in a spreadsheet; and
• use a range of data-cleansing techniques in Microsoft Excel.

What’s included

• Lesson plan
• Presentation
• Exercise sheet (also available in text format to aid accessibility)
• Reference sheet (also available in text format to aid accessibility, the text version also includes keyboard shortcuts for non-mouse users)
• Fairy-tale themed data file which includes a worked example and instructions within the file
• Supported by an optional 20-minute video tutorial on YouTube

Suitable for
The resource may be useful for different audiences and settings, including:

• Computing / Computer Science
• ICT / Information Technology
• Digital Skills
• GCSE and post-16 learning
• Vocational IT
• Adult education
• Workplace digital skills
• Data handling and introductory data skills

Keywords
Microsoft Excel, Excel, data cleansing, data cleaning, data quality, data handling, spreadsheets, spreadsheet skills, data management, duplicate data, Excel functions, digital skills, Computing, Computer Science, ICT, GCSE, adult learning, vocational IT, fairy tale, themed lesson