I teach four courses in the Master of Business Informatics at Yoobee College, and I've built interactive lessons for all of them. You can run the simulations, work through the labs and take the quizzes right here in your browser. They're free, and there's no account to make or anything to install.
Each course has its own colour on the lessons site and I've kept the same colours here, so it's easy to tell them apart. Every course page over there also shows which lessons cover which learning outcome.
What an organisation decides to build, and why it keeps getting the decision wrong.
15 credits, Level 8, no prerequisites
From a spreadsheet that contradicts itself to a normalised database you can query.
15 credits, Level 8, no prerequisites
What is really fixed on a project, what a delay actually costs, and which method the work in front of you is asking for.
15 credits, Level 8 · prerequisites MBI800 and MBI801
What AI and ML actually mean, where you already rely on them without noticing, and how a real decision gets made step by step.
15 credits, Level 8 · prerequisite MBI801, co-requisite MBI805B
This is the Scrum studio from MBI804, the real thing rather than a recording. A small team builds a parcel drone over three one-week Sprints. Drag to look around, click on anyone to see what their job is, and it stops after each step so you can read what just happened.
Loading the studio…
From MBI804 Lesson 3. The full lesson, with the reading and a seven-question check at the end, is on the lessons site ↗
These six habits are behind every lesson, whatever the course. It's pretty much how I teach in the classroom as well.
A lesson starts with a task, not a definition. In the database course you break a hospital's spreadsheet until it contradicts itself. In project management you pin two corners of the triangle and watch the third one move.
Seen in Introduction to DBMS · What a project is
Some ideas only make sense when you see them move. So you run a sales loop for twelve months and watch the obvious fix backfire, or watch a Scrum team build a drone over three Sprints and pause at each event.
Seen in Systems thinking · The Scrum studio
In the quizzes, every wrong option has its own explanation. The answer a student picks usually tells you exactly what they misunderstood, so that's the moment to explain it. Nothing is saved or graded.
Seen in MBI800 Lesson 1 · MBI804 Lesson 1
Netflix, Kodak and Fujifilm, NZ Post, Airbnb, Xero and Canva all turn up. When I do make a scenario up, like the SecurePay NZ project in cost management, I build it out properly so the numbers hold together.
Seen in Threats to strategy · Cost management
In the database course it's SQL, then diagrams, then mapping, then normalisation. Each lesson leans on the one before, so the list is in the order I teach it, not sorted by topic.
Seen in the MBI802 course path
No login, no downloads. Python runs in Google Colab and Power BI starts in the browser, because I don't want anyone spending their first class watching a progress bar.
Seen in Setting up Python · Setting up Power BI
One from each course. These are the ones I'd show someone first.
The Scrum studio: a Sprint you can watch, pause and orbit
Watch a Scrum team build a parcel drone over three one-week Sprints, in 3D. Pause it, scrub back and forth, and click on anyone to see what their job is.
Open the lesson
SwiftShop security lab
A shop I built to be insecure on purpose, with twenty vulnerabilities hidden in it. You find them, break in, and then explain how you'd fix each one.
Open the lesson
Three ways to predict things
Three ways to make a prediction, with no maths. Drag a line until it fits, grow a tree until it cheats, watch nine trees outvote it, and then run real Python in the page.
Open the lesson
Introduction and systems thinking
Run a sales loop for twelve months and watch the obvious fix backfire. Then take a real outage apart, one layer of the Iceberg Model at a time.
Open the lesson
Filter by course or type, or just search. Each card opens the lesson in a new tab.
The course runs from a single system to a whole industry: systems thinking first, then five platforms that rewired their markets, then what it costs when security is an afterthought.
Introduction and systems thinking
The whole of Lesson 1: what strategic planning actually decides, systems against collections, a sales loop you can run for twelve months to watch the obvious fix rebound, and the Iceberg Model taken down through a real outage. Ends with a knowledge check.
Open lesson
The Business Model Canvas
How a business model works, laid out on one page in nine blocks. Then a 90-minute group activity: six people, one IT business idea, a canvas filled in digitally and presented as a short slide deck.
Open lesson
Threats to opportunities to strategy
How a business capitalises on its threats. Netflix, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, NZ Post and Google each turned a threat into a strategy, Kodak and Fujifilm took the same threat two ways, then you flip six threats yourself.
Open lesson
Five stories that changed everything
Airbnb, Netflix, Xero, Canva and Alibaba — how each started from one frustration and built a platform that rewired its industry. IS architecture, growth figures and discussion questions for each.
Open lesson
Platform strategy
Why Uber owns no cars and the App Store writes no apps. Network effects, the chicken-and-egg problem, governance and boundary resources, Amazon against GE Predix — then a group research task and a knowledge check.
Open lesson
Systems security
What can go wrong, what it would cost, and how to defend and recover. Calculate real risk exposure, profile the attackers, tell malware apart, run a backup simulator and choose a disaster-recovery plan.
Open lesson
Immersive realities
A walk through AR, VR and mixed reality, with two demos that run in the browser. No headset needed, and no prior graphics knowledge assumed.
Open lesson
Capstone: shipping your own site
The final lecture. Design a layout in Google Stitch, turn it into real code with Claude Code, and put it live on GitHub Pages. Includes a prompt generator for your own portfolio.
Open lesson
The written study pack
The whole course rewritten as a properly typeset book: eleven chapters, worked examples, practice questions and answer keys. Yours to download and keep.
Open lesson
Each lesson assumes the one before it. SQL before diagrams, diagrams before mapping, mapping before normalisation — that order is the course, not a filing system.
Introduction to DBMS
Break a hospital's spreadsheet and watch it contradict itself, turn a bare number into information, then read the full eight-lesson outline with a preview of the material. Nothing to install.
Open lesson
Setting up MySQL
Two short guide videos — one for MacOS, one for Windows — so your MySQL client and Workbench are installed and ready before the first hands-on class.
Open lesson
Introduction to SQL with MySQL
The language databases actually speak. Create a database, build a table, insert real rows, then ask it questions — one interactive slide at a time.
Open lesson
Advanced database concepts
One table, built up step by step: add a column, change a data type, set a primary key and auto-number it, back it up and restore it, then ORDER BY and count it. Finishes with a safe look at SQL injection.
Open lesson
Client, server and databases
How a website actually works, for absolute beginners. Sort jobs between the two computers, then follow one search all the way to the database and back — watching the server run the SQL as it goes. Ends in a safe attack lab.
Open lesson
ER diagrams
Sketch the world before you build the tables. Entities, attributes and relationships in Chen's notation, and how to read cardinality at a glance.
Open lesson
ER diagrams in practice
Model five real systems — a library, a university, a hospital, an online store and a hotel — then check your diagram against a worked answer.
Open lesson
Advanced ER concepts
Real data is messier than the textbook. Weak entities, identifying relationships, and multivalued or derived attributes, with two exercises to test yourself.
Open lesson
Attributes and participation
The details that decide whether a model is right or wrong. Break attributes into their parts, then read total against partial participation through guided activities.
Open lesson
ER to relational mapping
Turn entity-relationship diagrams into real relational tables — entities, relationships, keys, and every tricky case in between.
Open lesson
Database normalisation
From messy tables to clean ones. Spot the anomalies, then split a table step by step from 1NF all the way to 3NF.
Open lesson
Normalisation activities
Seven short tables to practise on, mixed up and with no hints. Work out what normal form each is in and normalise it. The answers sit behind a password so you try it first.
Open lesson
Normalisation on video
Prefer to watch? A short walkthrough series — why we normalise, functional dependencies, and First Normal Form — each as a clip you can play any time.
Open lesson
UPDATE and DELETE
Change and remove rows with confidence. Short scrollable reels that show how to edit data without breaking everything around it.
Open lesson
SwiftShop security lab
A deliberately insecure shop with twenty hidden vulnerabilities, from editable price tags and secrets in the page source to XSS, privilege escalation and business-logic flaws. Find them, exploit them, then explain the fix.
Open lesson
Free SQL certifications
Nine genuinely free credentials — Oracle badges, IBM digital badges, HackerRank exams, Cisco certs and more. No credit card for any of them.
Open lesson
The written study pack
The whole course rewritten as a properly typeset book: eight chapters, worked examples, practice questions and answer keys. Yours to download and keep.
Open lesson
The course keeps returning to one question: which of the three constraints are you willing to move? Every estimate, every risk and every conflict on this page is another way of asking it.
What a project is, and what decides how to run it
The whole of Lesson 1: pin two corners of the constraint triangle and watch the third move, slide a delay along a real schedule to find which tasks the launch date cares about, choose between Agile, Waterfall and PRINCE2 across four project shapes, then price a risk on the grid.
Open lesson
The Business Model Canvas
How a business model works, laid out on one page in nine blocks. Then a 90-minute group activity: six people, one IT business idea, a canvas filled in digitally and presented as a short slide deck. Shared with MBI800.
Open lesson
Waterfall, Spiral, PRINCE2 and Agile — and Scrum up close
Lesson 2, and the one the 60% case study leans on. Four lifecycles drawn rather than described, a change dragged along the cost-of-change curve, Boehm’s spiral walked loop by loop, PRINCE2’s seven principles, themes and processes opened one at a time, then the whole Agile family — and Scrum in full: a clickable framework diagram, twelve “whose job is this?” situations, timeboxes that scale with the Sprint, and a board with a live burndown.
Open lesson
The Scrum studio: a Sprint you can watch, pause and orbit
Lesson 3. Six 3D miniatures build a parcel drone through three one-week Sprints while a caption says what is happening and a timeline marks every milestone: the Product Backlog ordered on the wall, refined and estimated with Planning Poker, Sprint Planning pulling cards into the Sprint Backlog, a fifteen-minute Daily Scrum every morning, an impediment landing and being cleared, stakeholders watching the drone lift off at the Review, one improvement from each Retrospective. It pauses after each step so you can read, then a seven-question check.
Open lesson
The outside auditor: peer audit round
The class swaps post-mortems — you audit a project you did not run, and nobody gets their own back. Practise the four audit questions on a fictional scenario whose author is confident and wrong about all of them, sort eight sentences into restating, asserting and auditing, choose a risk response where mitigating is the wrong answer, then build the one-page Corrective Action Plan and export it.
Open lesson
The collaboration reflex
Conflict and communication management taught through forty-five real, anonymised classroom conflicts: six full stories, four frameworks, and the one reflex experienced professionals reach for even when it is the wrong answer.
Open lesson
Conflict swap
Write a real conflict you have lived through, anonymously. The class shuffles everyone's stories so you analyse someone else's — root cause, the mode that was used, and the mode that should have been. A class code from me, no login.
Open lesson
Free Jira and Agile certifications
Three hand-picked credentials: Atlassian's own Jira learning path, a LinkedIn Agile Professional Certificate, and a quick free completion cert.
Open lesson
Getting a number out is the easy half. Being able to defend the number, and say what it cannot tell you, is the job this course is actually about.
Welcome to business data analytics
For absolute beginners: what AI and ML actually mean, where you already use them without noticing, how real decisions get made step by step, and a first look at Power BI.
Open lesson
Setting up Python
No installing, no downloads. Open Google Colab in your browser — identical on Mac and Windows — and write your first line of Python in two minutes.
Open lesson
Three ways to predict things
Linear regression, decision trees and random forests, explained with no maths. Move a line until it fits, grow a tree until it cheats, watch nine trees outvote the best one — then run real Python in the page.
Open lesson
Setting up Power BI
From nothing to your first chart. Everybody starts in the browser, which works the same on a Mac as on a PC — nobody should spend the first class watching a download bar.
Open lesson
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This list was last updated from the lessons site on 27 September 2026. The lessons themselves live on my lessons site.
If you're enrolled in MBI800 or MBI802, you can also download the whole course as a typeset study pack, with worked examples, practice questions and the answers. It's yours to keep.
See the study packs ↗I'm always happy to talk about it, whether you teach, run a programme, or you're thinking about studying with me. Send me a message and I'll get back to you.
