TU/e’s second free online course (Massive Open Online Course, MOOC) on data science already has more than 20,000 participants from 165 countries.
The course starts on Wednesday 12 November and gives participants the chance to learn valuable analysis techniques to get knowledge out of big data. For example, the resulting understanding can help to reduce healthcare costs, fight fraud and improve matching information systems to customers’ needs.
"For many people, ‘data scientist’ is the most exciting job of the century", says Wil van der Aalst, professor of Information Systems and lecturer of the TU/e’s new MOOC. "The growing volume of available data in society means there’s more need than ever for engineers who not only can handle this big data, but can also get valuable information out of it for companies and organizations." Van der Aalst believes the large number of registrations for the MOOC confirms today’s strong interest in this professional field.
Van der Aalst is one of the world’s most frequently cited computer scientists, and is scientific director of the Data Science Center Eindhoven (DSC/e) at TU/e which was set up last year. He wants to use the MOOC to strengthen the position of Eindhoven as an international data science centre. "It’s a kind of missionary role", says Van der Aalst. "We want to show the world what we can do here. The course offers the opportunity to link ourselves to top international talent. The MOOC allows us to reach many times the numbers of students in our own department."
Everyone with an internet connection can follow these lectures at TU/e. The MOOCs shows participants short films of around 10 minutes over a number of weeks. They are presented with control questions and homework assignments, which are discussed on a forum. TU/e offers its MOOCs on the international educational platform Coursera, on which a choice of more than 400 top-level courses are now available worldwide.
Source: www.cursor.tue.nl
