Data Analysis has been named the continuing education Course of the Year for 2014 by the Learning Resources Network (LERN), the leading continuing education association in the country. “Data analysis is a new 21st century skill for the workplace. The interest in it from people in all sorts of occupations and fields zoomed this year,” says William A. Draves, LERN President. “The vast majority of people taking the courses in data analysis see it as part of their job, not a full time job. Data analysis is seen as one of the new skills they need to incorporate into their skill set,” he noted. In course popularity, Data Analysis took over from Social Media in Business, which has been a top trend course in continuing education in previous years. The area of data analysis has emerged in just the last few years, and as a course really took off this year, Draves says.
Over a hundred continuing education units in colleges and universities around the nation now offer course in data analysis that did not offer them last year, LERN data shows. “We have had all this data. Now we can do something with it,” says John Rutledge, who teaches a course in Data Analysis. “Data analysis is now an integral part of a business organization’s drive for efficiency. It can help increase income or decrease expenses. It also drives efficiency in the use of people’s time,” Rutledge says.
The Learning Resources Network (LERN) is the largest continuing education association in the nation with over 1,100 educational institutions as members throughout the United States and Canada. Locally, the continuing education unit at University of Wisconsin Waukesha offers a Certificate in Data Analysis, composed of three one month online courses. Participants engage in the multimedia online courses anytime day or evening, with data analysis experts serving as instructors and providing frequent feedback and online discussion. For information on the UW-Waukesha offering, go to www.waukesha.uwc.edu/continuing-ed/online or call 262-521-5460. For questions, please email Holly Wehrhahn at Holly.Wehrhahn@uwc.edu.
