The analytics training landscape in India is changing very fast and for the right reasons. There's a huge talent gap to fill. It is expected that only in EE. UU. Have a deficit of 150.000 data scientists for 2018. India's number would also be similar.
People are inventing and discovering new ways to try to close this skills gap in the industry. As a result, not surprisingly, many new online and offline courses are emerging for people to improve their skills to meet industry demand.
In the last few months, we received several inquiries about the PG Diploma in Data Analysis Program offered by UpGrad and IIIT-Bangalore. The course has been running for over a year now and I thought it would be nice to go through their material and post my review to help people make the right career decision.
Table of Contents
- The review process
- My first impressions of the course
- Partnership with IIIT Bangalore
- Application
- Application process
- Applicant profile
- The curriculum
- Prerequisites
- Course outline
- Course content
- Professional orientation sessions
- Interaction with stakeholders
- My interaction with the faculty
- My interaction with industry experts
- My interaction with students
- Conclution
1. The review process
Like other reviews we have done in the past, we interact with various stakeholders along the chain to review the course. This includes administration, teachers, former students and current students of the program. This time too, I contacted the UpGrad team and asked them for access to the course material and they happily accepted it.
Although the material is provided by UpGrad, all opinions expressed in the article are my own.
2. My first impressions of the course
When I first came across the UpGrad and IIIT-B offer, It seemed like one more offer from a top-tier educational institute in India, aimed at active professionals. I thought, like most other competing programs, would take from 2 a 3 years of learning about the industry before getting the right program. Fortunately, I was wrong.
When I interacted with the UpGrad team, a couple of things stood out compared to other institutes / courses that I have reviewed in the past:
- UpGrad dreams far beyond the analysis course. The team is focused (obsessed) with delivering a platform / product that is much more than an analysis course. Here was a team looking to provide an online experience that could significantly compete with offline programs.. They seek to expand the entire branch of analytics offerings and not limit themselves to just one data analytics course.
- The team is very dynamic and intends to achieve more than others achieve in similar periods of time.. In 12 months, have done more than most other institutes do in just a few years. For instance, the type of industry links that UpGrad has created is more than a few years old for other courses.
3. Partnership with IIIT-Bangalore
Since the program runs online, not sure how the IIIT-Bangalore partnership works. Therefore, I spent some time understanding the model. IIIT-B and UpGrad collaborate on all aspects of the program, including curriculum creation, the development of the program, delivery of the program, professional support, etc. Students receive a PG Diploma in Data Analysis from IIIT-B upon successful completion.
This is a unique program launched by IIIT-B. The other programs IIITB offers are full-time offline programs that provide degrees such as M. Tech y PhD. This program, despite being online, has tried to keep most of the features of the college offline experience, as a solid credit structure.
4. App
4.1 The application process / selection:
- Selection process: Once people complete the application form to enroll in the program, must take an online test of 30 minutes verifying your quantitative and analytical aptitude. The admissions committee comprehensively analyzes the profile and performance of potential students and extends the offer to join deserving applicants. If someone has scored above a certain threshold on the GMAT exams, GRE, CAT o GATE, is exempt from online testing.
- The selection process has been launched to identify candidates who may go through a rigorous training regime during the next 11 months. This results in a selection ratio (cited by UpGrad) of 1:10.
I was glad that UpGrad was applying this selection criteria instead of accepting most applications they receive. Hopefully, that should improve the experience of the people enrolled in the course.
4.2 Applicant profile
The PGDDA has two ongoing batches of 300 Y 500 students. The program features a healthy mix of people from a variety of backgrounds who bring a wealth of prior experience.
- Lot work experience:
- The 30% of the audience has more than 10 years of experience.
- 35% of the participants have 5-10 years
- 35% of the participants have between 0 Y 4 years of experience
- Background of the participants:
- About half of the students have prior IT experience
- About the 25% of students are analytics professionals seeking to improve their skills.
- The remaining students come from various industries, as financial services, e-commerce, medical care, insurance, media, telecommunications and aerospace also feature on the list.
5 The study plan
5.1 Prerequisites:
All qualified students are expected to go through a preparatory program that meets some mathematical requirements, as matrix, linear algebra, and technical prerequisites like R, SQL, Painting, Excel, Python.
5.2 Course outline:
the PG Diploma Program of 11 months is a program of 36 credits consisting of 7 courses (check this on the course website, as it can change over time). The first 6 courses are:
- Introduction to data management
- Statistics and exploratory data analysis
- Predictive analytics
- Advanced predictive analytics
- Introducción a Big Data Analytics
- Elective Mastery at BFS, e-commerce and healthcare
Course outline
All these courses have 4 credits each. The seventh year is a final project of 3 months of duration, with 12 credits, and has been developed in collaboration with several companies / industry professionals.
This definitely seems complete for a show 11 months, but let's take a closer look at the content.
5.3 Course content
The UpGrad portal interface (LMS) looks nice and intuitive to use. You can see a summary of your progress on the course screen. What's more, there is a discussion portal (whose participation is counted for the evaluation) and a browser-based encoding window. You can also access past conferences and industry interactions here.
Discussion portal
The videos were of high quality and contained interesting stories. The participant must watch the full video before unlocking the exercises and moving on. Personally, I'm not a big fan of this feature, since I like to view content selectively. But I can understand why UpGrad decided to keep it this way to enforce participation.
5.4 Professional orientation sessions
There is a strong focus on preparing students for jobs in industry. The support provided to students is on the following front:
- Tutorships 1: 1: All students receive multiple tutoring sessions 1: 1 by industry experts covering the following points:
- The whole analytical landscape and the types of opportunities that exist.
- According to the student's profile, How can the student plan a transition to the field of analytics?
- What specific steps should the student take to transition to analytics?
- Finally, Industry experts conduct mock interviews and provide targeted feedback to improve their chances of transition.
- Resume preparation: Students receive support to prepare their resume and improve interview techniques, and other safeguards that are relevant to the transition to the domain of analytics.
6. Interaction with stakeholders
6.1 My interaction with the faculty
My interaction with Prof. Tricha from IIIT Bangalore gave me an inside look at the efforts that have been put into creating the course and some of the challenges the team is working on. We also discussed how the assessment was different for this course compared to other courses.. curiously, the assessment includes grading activities on the discussion portal. Here is the weighting of various activities in the course evaluation:
- MCQ qualified (on video): 15%
- Individual tasks – 30%
- Group case study – 15%
- Final exam – 25%
- Discussion forum activity – 15%
6.2 Interaction with industry experts
UpGrad has partnered with senior industry companies and individual contributors to create and deliver this program. They have Uber experts, Fractal Analytics, Genpact, Viacom, Dad iQ, etc. who work closely with them to develop the case studies. These experts are also involved in lecturing and bringing an industry perspective to students..
In general, industry participation during the program would be around 40%. Students can experience this in the form of recorded lectures, live sessions and even tutoring sessions. This Link contains the list of teachers who are part of this program.
During my interaction with members of the industry faculty, They told me that they are very excited about what UpGrad is creating and that they have great confidence in the team. They said the will to try new things, really stands out.
6.3 My interaction with students
In general, the students were happy with their learning and also with the effort made by the UpGrad team. They said the equipment was very accessible. Students mentioned that the course is quite intensive and their schedule ends up being hectic, although all for a good cause.
Students appreciated the connection with industry experts and the effort of the UpGrad team. They also suggested that having a full-time instructor with industry experience could further enhance your learning..
Manshul was working as a consultant at TCS when he decided to dive into analytics after more than 9 years of experience.
In the beginning, I was quite concerned about the quality of the program and, given my experience of 9 years, How could I keep up with the youth in my group? But my experience has only been gratifying. From program content to networking and professional support, this program offers a comprehensive solution. I was placed with Opera Solutions as a Senior Data Engineer through UpGrad IIIT-B Professional Support.
-Manshul Goel, senior data engineer, Opera Solutions.
Sajal Roychowdhury worked with Amazon as a risk analyst and then moved to Shopclues as a business analyst. He enjoyed the peer interaction during the program.
It's great to collaborate and learn with others although it is an online program. IIIT-B is a good brand and the program's curriculum is solid.
-Sajal Roychowdhary, business analyst, Shopclues
Other details
- Program fee: 2.25.000 INR + taxes
- Start of the next batch: july of 2017
My opinion: Who is this course for?
This course is suitable for experienced individuals who want to understand / experience analytics, but can not / don't want to take time to attend an offline course. The UpGrad platform has been created after careful consideration, investigation and testing. The team is dedicated to improving the platform regularly.
The content is of high quality and is taught by experienced teachers. I can say with great confidence that among all the courses coming up in India, the UpGrad and IIITB course has evolved faster and will continue to do so.
While all efforts are going in the right direction, in the next 6 months it will be clear how the industry accepts graduates of this course.
7. Conclution
I enjoyed talking to the UpGrad team and would appreciate them giving me unrestricted access to their teachers / students. I loved their approach to the platform, the team's attitude to get things done, the quality of their content and the innovation they are bringing.
What would I like to see more of? I would like a full-time specialist to be brought on board for the course. What's more, statistics on locations will only be available in the next 6 a 12 months.
Divulgation: This sponsored post has been written by DataPeaker on behalf of and with input from UpGrad. All opinions expressed in this publication are wholly owned by DataPeaker.
