MIT Offers For-Profit Online Course on Big Data, with Certification
EdX, the non-profit online learning organization with a huge roster of global institutions under the xConsortium participating, has been a leader in the free online education arena for several years. In June of last year, the organization released the code for its learning platform under an open source license. And, MIT has been leveraging the platform to deliver free online courses, as we covered here. Now, MIT has announced that it will start offering for-profit courses on edX, beginning with a course on Big Data. Because of the salaries that people with Big Data skills are commanding in the job market, the course could be a good opportunity for job seekers.
According to the announcement:
"MIT will offer its first online professional course, Tackling the Challenges of Big Data, to a global audience beginning March 4, 2014. The four-week online course, aimed at technical professionals and executives, will tackle state-of-the-art topics in big data ranging from data collection, storage and processing to analytics and visualization, as well as address a range of real world applications. Leading the course will be 12 faculty experts from the world-renowned MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the School of Engineering. The course will be offered through MIT Professional Education, the arm of MIT that provides professional education and training for science, engineering and technology professionals worldwide."
"Upon completion, participants will receive an MIT Professional Education certificate of completion and access to MIT Professional Education’s expansive professional alumni network. The course will be offered at $495."
That sounds like a valuable course to take for under $500, and it comes with a certification in a tech arena where there are too few skilled people. Undoubtedly, course participants will gain skills with Hadoop and other popular Big Data and analytics tools.
Sanjay Sarma, director of the MIT Office of Digital Learning and the Fred Fort Flowers & Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, said, in a statement: “I am thrilled with MIT Professional Education’s Online X course offering of Tackling the Challenges of Big Data as part of MIT’s digital learning portfolio. Our goal is to expand access to MIT’s knowledge and expertise globally via online courses. A course on a high interest topic such as big data is a perfect way for us to begin addressing the learning needs of working professionals who may not otherwise be able to come to MIT to attend courses.”
Immediate registration is available online.