In last week’s post, I discussed one of the projects I’m currently working on at IBM.
My colleagues and I have another interesting project that I want to introduce you to as well. It’s called Big Data University and is an online educational site that provides free courses on data science, big data, and programming.
As just mentioned, the courses don’t cost you a thing. All you need to do to take them at your own pace, at your place (as some like to say) is register with the site.[1]
Though not an accredited university, certificates of completion are issued, and if you complete a series of specific courses, Open Badges backed by IBM are awarded. They do indeed look good on your site, LinkedIn, or even your resume. 🙂
Above all, you get the education contained within for free and from the comfort of your own home.
We offer a variety of data science and big data courses. The Scala for Data Science learning path includes a handful of courses created for BDU by Lightbend (the company behind Scala). I find those courses to be remarkably good. I do recommend however that you check out all our Learning Paths.[2]
Getting to the point of today’s post title, our ambitious goal is to educate a million data scientists around the world. And we do mean around the world. We are targeting students from Africa, China, India, South America, Europe, et cetera. And of course, North America as well.
At this point in time, we have hundreds of thousands of members, but our aim really is to have at least a million people engaged in learning, taking courses, and practicing data science.
We believe in the transformative power of education, which can truly improve the world.[3] And as such, I want to cordially invite you to join us and help us spread the message.
- You won’t get spammed, fear not. You will receive a newsletter about new courses once a month, and you can unsubscribe from that at any time, if so desired. ^
- We are in the process of migrating the site, switching it over from Moodle to Open edX. I must say, I like the latter significantly more, and I’m sure many of our registered users will share the same feeling. It will certainly look prettier. 😉 ^
- That’s why we partnered with the UN Foundation in support of the UN Global Development Goals. You’ll find several material on the site that has examples and information on data science and big data problems with a social good component. ^
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Well, what you do is amazing. I just enrolled for a watson course! BigDataUniversity is something I follow on FB as well. I will share this with my groups!