Best Free MOOCs In Business For February

Knowledge Management and Big Data in Business

School: Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Knowledge Management and Innovation Research Center –KMIRC)

Platform: edX

Registration Link: CLICK HERE

Start Date: February 23, 2016 (6 Weeks Long)

Workload: 4-6 Hours Per Week

Instructors: Eric Tsui, W.B. Lee, Klaus Tochtermann, Usama Fayyad, Jay Lee

Credentials: The instructors come from a variety of backgrounds. Dr. Fayyad, a holder of 30 patents, is the chief data officer and managing director of Barclays Bank in London. Jay Lee teaches at the University of Cincinnati and is a founding member of the National Science Foundation. Tochtermann has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and serves as the director of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (along with teaching) at the University of Kiel in Germany. W.B. Lee chairs the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Hong Polytechnic, where Tsui is a professor.

Graded: Students can receive a verified certificate for $50, provided they meet all expectations for the course.

Description: “Too big, too fast.” That’s how some might characterize the proliferation of knowledge and data in recent years. However, knowledge is often unstructured, contradictory, and rarely explicit, precise, or clear. In this course, which is designed more for knowledge workers than IT professionals, students will be exposed to the growing field of knowledge management. In particular, students will examine areas like cloud computing, big data, and open-linked data – and the tools being applied to better understand cause-and-effect and discover hidden relationships.

Overall, the course comes with five goals:

1) “Understand the role of Knowledge Management (KM) practitioners in creating business value.

2) Become familiar with the techniques and tools for capturing, processing, classifying and organizing knowledge.

3) How to analyze large quantities of data and information through analytics.

4) Understand the role of social media and technologies in innovating new business services.

5) Apply the principles you have learnt to company-based business projects.”

Review: “I really enjoyed this MOOC. I have been a knowledge management consultant for more than 20 years, so I was drawn to it initially because I wanted to see how it would cover the subject. During the early weeks I re-visited much that I already knew, but as it progressed, it became progressively more interesting and exciting.  For me the most valuable topic was Week 6, Big Data. The presenter, Adjunct Professor Usama Fayyad, Ph.D. was excellent. He drew on experience in the field and he gave freely of his hard-won knowledge. For anyone contemplating a Big Data project, his section of this MOOC is a must.

From a wider perspective, if you want to understand the whole Knowledge Management enchilada, (knowledge and the techniques, tools and processes for its management), the Cloud and our Big Data future, there is no better place to start.  One topic is missing: no course on Big Data can be complete without a section on privacy and security and the challenge of balancing utility and privacy. There is any number of excellent academics and commentators that could make a valuable contribution. Hopefully in time for the next release.” For additional reviews, click here.