Overview of the Google Certificates course.

To begin my journey to learn data analytics, I have enrolled in the Google Careers Data Analytics certificate course. This is what goes on on the course. There are eight modules, and they represent the process of gathering and using data.

Module 1: Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere. As this is the first module in the sequence, it is very introductory. In general, they explain what the course is about, and start to introduce the massive scope of data in today's world. They also introduce the core teaching elements that you will interact with throughout the course.

Module 2: Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions. This course starts to get into the concepts of how to think about data analytics. It teaches concepts such as setting SMART goals, the data lifecycle, and some important soft skills for working with data such as communication. They also get into the basics of using spreadsheets. Both of the first modules went very quickly for me, because there is a lot of crossover with the concepts which I already learned in graduate school.

Module 3: Prepare Data for Exploration. This is when the course got fun for me. First they got into some of the more technical aspects of data- such as whether it is nominal or ordinal, and how to look out for bias. It also introduced how to work with large datasets. This is the first time you get to start organizing spreadsheets. In the middle of this module, they introduce you to SQL for the first time and Big Query through Google. To my great surprise, I realized that using SQL is actually a lot of fun!

Module 4: Process Data from Dirty to Clean. Module 4 is when the course really got fun! The course takes users on a deeper dive into spreadsheets and SQL- this is when I realized I needed to start keeping track of all the queries I was running in order to refer back to them later. Although the difficulty of what I was doing in sheets/SQL was increasing, I still felt very supported by the course. I began to look forward to doing it on my own in the future, and building a portfolio.

For modules 5-8, I am going to make their own posts. Module 5 is when things got truly tricky! Some other elements to know about in review of this course: is the structure of it. The basic elements are:

Videos: The majority of the course, I would say, is made up of videos. The different instructors go through hard and soft skills in the videos- and give you little pep talks along the way! Before technical videos, you are given the option to upload or search for the dataset/sheet that they are using for the video. This way, you can actually follow along with what they are doing and practice with it. I am not typically able to learn from listening, so I was very pleased to see the transcript beneath the video. I was able to just read through that at my own pace, listen to my own music, and then watch the video if I needed at tricky sections. I also liked that you are able to click on the transcript and it will bring you to that spot in the video. One complaint that I do have with the videos it that often, the bar with video progress and settings button will disappear. This means if I want to watch a specific section a few times in a row, I have to scroll all the way back down in the transcript. That is kind of annoying.

Learning Logs: Occasionally throughout the course, they will have you download a learning log template. It is kind of like a journal that focuses on practical skills. You can fill it out and reflect on what you are learning, and save them in your files for later. This is not graded. I often did not do them, because I processed them in other ways.

Discussion forums: The course is very clear that building a community is important. It gave us the opportunity to comment on discussion forums about what we were learning, in order to reflect and connect. I also did not really take them up on these- I was building my community on Tik Tok and LinkedIn!

Information pages: These are almost as common as the videos. These are pages that will walk you through a certain piece of information or skill. It will provide in depth explanations (narratively) as well as providing graphics, explaining its topic. These often contain many links in them to free sources of information that you can refer to in the future. I saved all of these links in my google drive folder I made for the course.

Matching activities: The matching activities will pop up sometimes, giving you the chance to match terms. This helped me learn them better prior to tests and quizzes so I could go faster when I got to them. I stopped memorizing terms after the second module, when the course got more technical.

Hands on activities (quizzes): These have been my favorite part of the course! I really learn a lot from these hands on activities. The hands on activity will walk you through everything you need to do- but you still need to do it! If you are working in sheets they will tell you exactly the boxes to click on, tabs to go to, and formulas to write. In Big Query they will show you how to get to your dataset, how to interact with it, and which queries to write. Then, they will give you a question at the end based on the results that you should have come up with. Sometimes they will have you write a query without telling you exactly what to do- but it will just be an extension of what you have already done. If you get the answers wrong, you can always try again! It is all open notes and they give you feedback. When I work my way through these activities, I try to look at the question they are asking me to solve- and then do it myself before looking at what query they have told me to run or formula they said to write. This takes me a lot longer but thinking through each component is very helpful.

Weekly quizzes: Each module of the course is broken into "weeks". About 4-5. Every week has a quiz at the end. These quizzes are generally multiple choice, maybe with the chance to write a basic query right in the quiz. The quizzes generally are not very hard- even if you go over a really complex query in the hands on activity, the quiz will just bring you back to the foundational elements that are not as complex. It feels to me like the course is trying to help us get exposure to harder things, but then showing us in the quizzes and tests that we are not expected to be at an advanced level yet.

Module challenge exams: At the end of each module, there is a "course challenge". This is timed, and you can take it up to 3 times in 24 hours. It, like the quizzes, is open notes. Unlike my recent experiences in graduate school, there is no need to be anxious about these exams! I found that they are basically just an aggregation of the quizzes- I rarely ever failed them on my first try and if I did, I was able to pass them easily with flying colors on my second try.

And there you have it! This is an overview of the Google Certificates Course so far.