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Short Courses: Digital Marketing, Big Data & Social Analytics

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Featured Short Term Courses: Digital Marketing, Big Data & Social Analytics

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology – Sloan School Of Management

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management offers a fully online short term course in digital marketing analytics. The program is delivered in collaboration with GetSmarter, an online education provider.

In order to complete this course, students are required to have a computer with an internet connection, a current email account, a PDF reader, as well as Adobe Flash Player for viewing videos. It is also recommended that students use Google Chrome as their internet browser when accessing this online course. The course offers an interactive learning experience to students with e-learning activities, infographics, and discussion forums.

The coursework is divided into the following modules after an orientation:

  • Understanding the Digital Marketing Channel Mix
  • Implementing Integrated Digital Marketing
  • Understanding Predictive Analytics and Predictive Marketing
  • Implementing Predictive Marketing Across Channels
  • Optimizing Return on Investment (ROI)
  • The Future of Integrated Digital Marketing: Video, Mobile, and Artificial Intelligence

The program offers students with a detailed understanding of digital marketing and analytics, and the integration of these tools for making strategic decisions. They learn how to apply marketing principles to real-world situations.

This program also offers students the opportunity to earn a certificate of completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management. This certificate will be issued in their legal name at no additional cost.

  • Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts (GetSmarter)
  • Accreditation: New England Commission of Higher Education
  • Expected Time to Completion: Six weeks; six to eight hours per week
  • Cost: $2,800

Yale School of Management

The Yale School of Management offers an online course titled “Digital Marketing: A Strategic Perspective.” This online course provides students with the opportunity to explore how they can use analytics and experimentation for fostering innovation in their organization. The course teaches them how to make data-driven decisions. This program is delivered in collaboration with online course provider, GetSmarter.

​The program is ideal for professionals, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and executives, looking to understand their customers and grow their business.

To complete the program, students must have a current email account and access to a computer with internet, as well as a PDF Reader. They also need Adobe Flash Player for accessing certain program content, such as interactive infographics. Google Chrome is the recommended browser.

​This eight-week course involves the following modules after an orientation:

  • Frameworks for Generating Customer Value
  • Paid Media: Advertising That Reaches Customers
  • Owned Media: Impactful Content Marketing
  • Social Media: Listening, Promotion, and Engagement
  • Expanding Value Using Mobile and Emerging Technologies
  • Using Analytics to Innovate
  • Organizational Considerations for Digital Transformation
  • Digital Marketing, Regulation, and the Future

Students learn how to harness data to make critical business decisions, conduct experiments and tests, use those results to drive their business, and transform their organization into a digital powerhouse. At the end of the program, graduates will earn an official certificate of participation from the Yale School of Management Executive Education.

  • Location: New Haven, Connecticut
  • Accreditation: Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
  • Expected Time to Completion: Eight weeks; six to eight hours per week
  • Cost: $2,800

University of Oxford – Saïd Business School

The University of Oxford Saïd Business School offers an online program in digital marketing and disruptive strategy program. The entirely online program is delivered in collaboration with GetSmarter, an online education provider.

The program has been developed by industry experts and provides students with an opportunity to study the digital marketing industry and upcoming trends in the field. This advanced program is best suited for experienced professionals with a sound understanding of marketing practices and principles or mid-level marketing managers working in leadership positions.

The program is broken down into manageable, weekly modules, designed for accelerating students’ learning through interactive learning activities. Students will require a current email account, access to a computer with internet, and a PDF reader. They may also have to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel. The course website recommends that students use Google Chrome as their internet browser when accessing this online program. Google, Vimeo, and YouTube are other applications that may be used in the delivery of this program.

The course is delivered over eight weeks, covering eight different modules after an orientation:

  • Marketing Disrupted
  • Marketing Psychology
  • Value Creation
  • Established Digital Marketing Channels
  • Emerging Digital Marketing Channels
  • The Power of Communities and Influence
  • Experimentation, Measurement, and Analytics
  • The Future of Marketing

After successfully completing this online course, students get a certificate of attendance from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. They will become well-equipped to understand the various applications of digital marketing, how digital media can be used to track consumer behaviour, and the ability to adopt both old and new digital marketing technologies.

  • Location: Oxford, England
  • Accreditation: EQUIS – EFMD
  • Expected Time to Completion: Eight weeks; seven to ten hours per week
  • Cost: £2,200

University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego offers several online short term courses under its big data specialization. One such course is an “Introduction to Big Data,” which provides students with an introduction to Hadoop, a well-known big data analysis framework. UCSD works in collaboration with online course provider, Coursera, to deliver the program. It is delivered over three weeks, covering many different modules. The syllabus includes the following:

  • Big Data: Why and Where – The meaning of “big data” and where it originates.
  • Characteristics of Big Data and Dimensions of Scalability – The characteristics of the big “Vs” (volume, variety, velocity, veracity, and valence). It also involves the 6th “V” that is value.
  • Data Science: Getting Value Out of Big Data – In this module the course will introduce a five-step process for approaching data science problems (acquiring data, exploring data, pre-processing data, analyzing data, communicating results, and turning insights into action).
  • Foundations for Big Data Systems and Programming – This involves new programming frameworks and systems.
  • Systems: Getting Started With Hadoop – This will include detailed overviews of Hadoop and MapReduce.

At the end of the program, students are able to describe the big data landscape, explain the V’s of big data, identify big data problems, summarize the features and value of core Hadoop stack components, and install and run a program using Hadoop.

Some of the other courses included in the big data specialization are “Big Data Modeling and Management Systems,” “Big Data Integration and Processing,” “Graph Analytics for Big Data,” “Machine Learning With Big Data,” and a capstone project.

  • Location: San Diego, California
  • Accreditation: WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC)
  • Expected Time to Completion: Three weeks
  • Cost: Free (students can add a verified certificate at a cost)

Microsoft

Microsoft offers the short course “Introduction to Big Data.” The course is offered through edX, an online MOOC provider. The instructor for the course is a senior content developer at Microsoft Learning Experiences, Mr. Graeme Malcolm.

The course provides students with an introduction to big data and the technologies associated with it. Being one of the first courses in Microsoft’s big data curriculum, this course helps students get a head start on tackling the concepts of big data, as well as connect with fellow students and teaching assistants.

The course is delivered over three weeks and comprises four different modules: an introduction, data basics, the fundamentals of databases, and an introduction to big data. The course provides a primer to Microsoft’s big data curriculum. Students learn about the fundamentals of databases, the basic principles associated with big data, and data formats and techniques.

After completing this course, students can obtain a verified, instructor-signed certificate with the institution’s logo for verifying their achievements and increasing their job prospects. This certificate can be added to a CV or resume, or posted to a LinkedIn profile.

  • Location: Online
  • Accreditation: N/A
  • Expected Time to Completion: Three weeks; three to four hours per week
  • Cost: Free (students can add a verified certificate for $99)

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, offers the short online course “Social Media Data Analytics.” The course is delivered in collaboration with online education provider, Coursera and includes a series of mini-projects or small assignments.

Each assignment involves data collection, presentation, and analysis, including the use of several social media sources and the techniques learned in class. Students gain skills such as statistical analysis, Python programming, R programming, and sentiment analysis.

The course is delivered by Chirag Shah, an associate professor at the School of Communication & Information (SC&I) and the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University. It is delivered over four weeks, covering four different modules: an introduction to data analytics; collecting and extracting social media data; data analysis, visualization, and exploration; and case studies.

In the first module, several concepts related to social media data and data analytics are introduced, while the second module involves how to collect data from Twitter and YouTube. The third module focuses on analyzing and visualizing data from various social media services, and in the final module students work on two case studies.

By the end of the course, students will be able to utilize various application programming interface (API) services for collecting data from different sources, such as YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr, and process the collected data using methods such as regression, classification, and correlation. Upon completion of the course, students are prepared for employment as social media, data, or web analysts, as well as marketing and public relations professionals.

  • Location: New Brunswick, New Jersey
  • Accreditation: Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE)
  • Expected Time to Completion: Four weeks; three to six hours per week
  • Cost: Free (students can add a verified certificate for a fee)

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania offers the online course “Big Data and Education.” This program is also offered in collaboration the massive open online course provider, edX.

Students learn when and how to conduct data analytics and data mining. They also examine how and when to apply these methods, as well as their strengths and weaknesses for different applications. The course presents how to use each method for answering education research questions and for driving improvement in educational systems and software.

The eight-week course is divided into eight modules. The curriculum includes the following topics: prediction modeling, model goodness and validation, behavior detection, and feature engineering, knowledge inference, relationship mining, visualization, structure discovery, and discovery with models.

Students explore the different ways to conduct data mining and how to use tools such as RapidMiner and Python. On completing the course, students can also pursue a verified certificate for highlighting the knowledge and skills they gained.

  • Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Accreditation: Middle States Commission on Higher Education
  • Expected Time to Completion: Eight weeks; six to 12 hours per week
  • Cost: Free (students can add a verified certificate for $99)

Professors to Know in Online Courses in Digital Marketing, Big Data & Social Analytics

Sinan Aral, PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Sinan Aral is a professor of marketing and IT at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also leads MIT’s digital initiatives at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Dr. Aral teaches self-paced online courses such as digital marketing analytics and machine learning in business through GetSmarter.

Dr. Aral’s research efforts are focused on social contagion, product virality, and measuring the impact of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. His research has appeared in renowned journals such as Information Systems Research and the American Journal of Sociology. Professor Aral completed holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MPP from Harvard University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA from Northwestern University.

Ryan Baker, PhD University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Ryan S. Baker is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Learning Analytics. He teaches the open online course “Big Data and Education” on the EdX platform. In the past, Dr. Baker has taught courses such as methods in educational data mining, foundations of teaching and learning, learning analytics: process and theory, and technology and human development.

Dr. Baker’s research efforts are focused on educational data mining, learning analytics, and student modeling. Professor Baker has published his work in prominent journals such as the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, the Journal of Educational Data Mining, and the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Education. He has also won numerous awards such as the Ram Kumar Memorial Test of Time Award, an Educational Research Award, and a Best Paper Award. He completed his PhD and MS degrees at Carnegie Mellon University and received a ScB from Brown University.

Amarnath Gupta, PhD University of California San Diego

Dr. Amarnath Gupta is a research scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego. He teaches a variety of courses on the Coursera platform such as an introduction to big data, graph analytics for big data, big data integration and processing, and big data modelling and management systems.

Primarily, Dr. Gupta’s research explores information and knowledge modeling for biomedical sciences, graph data management, and multimedia data management. Professor Gupta has been published in top journals such as BMC Bioinformatics and Data & Knowledge Engineering. He also has won various awards, including the ACM Distinguished Scientist award.