Novosibirsk State University and the 2GIS technology company are opening a joint specialization in the field of data analysis on Coursera, the world's leading online education platform.
Coursera is the largest international online education site. More than 25 million students from around the world are registered and almost a million of them speak Russian. The Coursera platform offers courses from 149 leading universities in the world.
NSU has been on the platform since 2016 with courses on Genetics, Fundamentals of Virology, Gemstones: Diagnosis and Examination, GMOs: Creation Technology and Application, and Biosensors. In September 2017, the course on GMOs won the nomination "Best Practices for Creating Online Courses" at the International Competition of Open Online Courses EDCRUNCH AWARD OOC 2017.
Who is this specialization designed for?
The training course is targeted at two main audiences. Small business owners will learn to solve a wide range of problems qualitatively including analyzing risks, calculating profits, and understanding competitor activity. Also, it will help them, work with other indicators since accurate and timely interpretation of information can save entrepreneurs from financial losses. The same issues are relevant for analytical departments at large companies that would like to improve the qualifications of their employees.
The second audience is students and beginners. "Data Analysis" specialization is an opportunity to obtain a coherent "textbook" on analytical disciplines (probability theory, mathematical statistics, mathematical methods), that are relevant in many forms to many specialties. The acquired skills will help senior students and graduates with little work experience increase their chances of finding employment in the field of analytics and marketing.
Why NSU and 2GIS?
This is the first online product that the University implemented jointly with an industrial partner.
NSU is constantly expanding the range of educational offline programs created with the participation of large business. When we conceived of this course, it was certainly important that the partner bring the necessary competencies. That meant finding a company that works daily with a huge amount of data from users. It was during the process of development that we appreciated all the advantages of this cooperation, the huge degree of involvement from our partners. They brought to it a creative and at the same time very responsible approach to our joint product. We hope the positive experience was mutual.
Ivan Chubchenko, Head of the 2GIS Training Center also noted the advantages of working on the project:
“First, we received a very high-quality educational product. Traditionally, we pay great attention to training and development of employees in 2GIS, but mostly in applied specific (for example, production technologies) and in humanities disciplines. First of all, thanks to this project we developed an excellent course that is relevant and convenient for a very wide range of people: marketers, analysts, HR, financiers, commercial employees and many others. Secondly, we gained new experience creating electronic content. The company has a large database of electronic courses on various topics. Almost all of them we made ourselves. Working together with colleagues from NSU allowed us not only to take a fresh look at the materials we already produced, but also to create a quality standard for developing electronic and video courses. In addition, a passing certificate in this specialization will undoubtedly be a plus when applying for employment at 2GIS for a profile position.”
What does the specialization include?
The specialization consists of four online courses: "Introduction to Data", "Investigation of Interactions", "Comparison and Creation of Groups", and "Trends and Classifications". Online students will watch 120 video lectures, complete practical assignments on real data from the 2GIS company, work with hundreds of test questions and computational problems.
Course students will learn how to work with different kinds of data, separate related events from random coincidences, segment the audience and allocate target segments, analyze trends, compare different solutions to the problem and choose the best, and competently build forecast models.
Specialist teachers are professionals in data analysis: Olga Echevskaya (NSU) Candidate in Sociological Sciences and expert in working with survey data, Victor Demin (2GIS) Candidate in Technical Sciences and data analysis specialist, and Natalya Galanova (2GIS) data analysis specialist.
How do you start learning?
In order to start learning, the user needs to: