Coursera Data Science Specialization

One of the items that has me the most excited in my professional development, currently, is the Coursera Johns Hopkins University Data Science Specialization. Coursera touts these specializations as "Your Pathway to Expertise." I guess we'll have to see how true that is, but to this point it has been a great tool for learning data science pretty comprehensively. Essentially, there is a set of courses offered that follow the steps to learn a topic.

For the data science specialization there are 9 courses and the capstone project. I've only taken the first three courses, but here are some of the positives I've experienced about the program so far.

Program Speed and Starting Point

The program overall starts a bit slow, but I think that's almost preferable. Some of the projects and even quizzes can take a bit of time if you are new to GitHub, R or even Coursera. However, the first two courses are referenced in the other following courses so I think it's good to get a good base there. I took the first two at the same time and I feel like that kept me very busy, but helped provide a fuller picture of the specialization.

Course Order

After the first two courses you can take the courses in almost any order. This could be really helpful if you wanted to pick and choose which courses to take. I plan to take them all so it seems easy to take them in the order they are set up.

Redundancy & Length

To this point most of the courses are being offered once a month and they last for four weeks. In my opinion, this has been a great setup. It keeps you fresh and focused and offers you the chance to take something a month later if you need to retake it or just want to take a month off.

Lectures & Quizzes

The lectures and quizzes are all available at the beginning of the course and the lectures are available for download in various formats. For someone who likes to work ahead this has been a huge selling point for me. It just allows you to work at your own pace, as long as your pace is ahead of the weekly quiz deadlines! For the busy professional this can be a life saver.

Projects

The projects have been the hardest part of the courses for me. I feel like I've probably learned the most, but most of that has been because of the discussion forums. The directions and grading clarity has been a big rough around the edges. I believe that's mostly due to this being the first pass through the courses. I'm hopefully it will get better as time goes on.

Overall

If you want to learn more about data science I would definitely check out these offerings.

Read more: Coursera Johns Hopkins University Data Science Specialization