To Nanodegeree Or Not To Nanodegree?
Thobela <lefase/>
Matts Makhura here. Your one and only jack of all trades. That’s rarely seen as a master of one, but oftentimes better; than a master of one. Uhm, it’s been a minute. Have you been upskilling? I have, I know you have “Unfinished” — Udemy courses to finish :)
Online short courses; we all have them piled up in our respective online learning platforms. I mean it’s becoming this century’s life-proof way to upskilling.F*$k yeah ( 😅 I can literally hear your inner voices saying that). Even well-known local South African universities, bo UCT le bo Stellenbosch University, are starting to catch up to this non-traditional way of empowering students with a new set of tools.
From the quick research I conducted on Google search, lol I know 🤓, this 21st century way of upskilling is not necessarily working.
I mean; legit researchers claim that these MOOCs ( massive open online courses ) have an average completion rate of 4%.
When I went deeper into this Google search rabbit hole, I observed that these MOOCs are oftentimes only just about information — The HOW. They assume that students enrolling have the WHY figured out.
After a thorough investigation, I took the liberty to enroll in a very “Unique” MOOC called Udacity. I enrolled in a Business Analytics Nanodegree that they are currently offering. I was very intrigued at how they demonstrated “WHY” gaining the skill set that the course offers could be beneficial to your career.
I have, in the past, attempted to sharpen my data analysis acumen but I would quickly turn into a statistic, drop out and become part of the 97% of students that drop out from MOOCs.
However – I curiously opened up my mind and soul , just like a child exploring new ways to build a specific object using Lego blocks , to this unique MOOC called Udacity.
As a Solution’s Analyst doing this course immensely enlightened me to embrace new ways to:
- Define my WHAT and WHY
- Refine my HOW and WHERE
I can now proudly say that — I have finished an online course. Went from zero to a data hero in just a couple of months.
If “U” are interested in going through a few Dashboards that I created in Tableau as part of a project that utilized Kaggle’s data-set, which tracks the on-time performance of the US domestic flights operated by large air carriers in 2015. Click here to be redirected to my Github.
Till next time and don’t forget to remember your WHY to turn that “Unfinished” online course into a “Unique” online learning journey to success !
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A special shout out to : Christine Nishiyama
