New Frontiers: JGSOM-QMIT Partners up with Kumu in Brand New Initiative

Poised to give QMIT students hands-on experience in a data-driven world, the JGSOM-QMIT and Kumu partnership is a match made in business analytics heaven.

The Department of Quantitative Methods and Information Technology (QMIT) of the John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM) has entered into a six-month partnership with Filipino livestream app, Kumu, in a pioneering initiative that hopes to elevate both Ateneo and Kumu into thought leadership.
 
Recognizing the need to extend their course beyond a purely theoretical perspective, Mr. Joseph Ilagan, Lead Faculty of the Analytics Elective of the Management Engineering (ME) curriculum, and his team sought out companies that could hopefully share data that their students could analyze. Kumu agreed to work with QMIT and their students, and the partnership was sealed soon after.
 
Co-founded by Rexy Josh Dorado and Roland Ros in 2017, Kumu is a community platform that allows users to livestream, play games live, participate in promotions, send gifts, and win virtual awards that can be converted to cash. Built by Filipinos for Filipinos, Kumu has risen in popularity with its content creator base increasing from 65 to 1,000 in the past year and its monthly active users rising from 500,000 people to two million strong since its launch on Android and iOS devices in February 2018.

 
Mr. Joselito Olpoc, QMIT Department Chair, frames this partnership as one of serendipity. “[The partnership] was a marriage of  ideas coming from the talks we had with Kumu and the need to come up with an applied business analytics class in the ME Program.”
 
Mr. Matthew Uy, another QMIT faculty, further emphasizes that given the technological advances of the decade and the pandemic-induced shift toward online settings, business analytics is now more relevant than ever. Modern businesses use analytics to gain essential insights into market and consumer behavior. This means that market needs can be better understood, and products and services could be adjusted to serve these needs better. It is these insights that Kumu and Ateneo are leveraging in this partnership.
 
“It’s very exciting,” says Ilagan. “We are no longer confined to the theoretical aspects of learning analytics. This is real-world experience already. The students can put this experience in their resumes. Ateneo is the only university that has this type of engagement with Kumu.” With Kumu sharing their data for analysis, the faculty and students of QMIT gain a chance to apply their knowledge and skills. In return, Kumu is poised to benefit from the partnership through acquiring rich and actionable data-driven insights involving various aspects of the platform and its community.
 
The partnership also includes mentorship programs, data gathering, exploratory data analysis, processing and analysis of survey responses, and the development of analytics scripts and programs among others. Because the partnership is very new, the pilot class was kept small and exclusive. “We invited students who we know would do a good job. Those students who we know can bring something to the table, who want to be there, and who will try their best,” shares Uy. The team is hopeful for the future of this partnership, with Uy adding, “Although it will be a challenge, we’d like to scale it up to include more people and more programs outside of ME in the future.”

For more news and stories on Loyola Schools, visit http://www.ateneo.edu/ls/loyola-schools-bulletin.