Learn Data Analytics:
The Best Courses and Resources
If you want to become a data analyst, you don’t necessarily need to attend in-person programs at a university or college. Learning data analytics can be easy with one of the best online data analytics boot camps or courses.
These online courses will teach you the necessary analytic techniques to work with data. Many specialize in business analytics. We’ve compiled a list of the best online data analytics courses and resources to help you get started.
What Is Data Analytics?
Data analytics is about collecting, organizing, storing, and analyzing data to find valuable insights. Companies use data analytics to achieve their business goals by finding useful insights into their customers and industry trends.
The field combines principles of statistics, computer programming, computer science, and math. Data analysts manage and analyze databases and data sets. They use various techniques to manage and analyze data, including things like data cleansing, data modeling, and forecasting tools.
What Jobs Use Data Analytics Skills?
Many roles rely on strong data analytics skills. As well as data analysts, experts who work in business analytics, digital marketing, and project management also need to have an excellent understanding of data analysis.
Data analyst
Data analytics is central to a data analyst’s role. These professionals collect, organize, and analyze data. Data analysts can work in a wide range of industries.
Digital marketer
A large part of being a digital marketer means collecting and analyzing data. Digital marketers need to know how to work with data structures and visualize data to develop actionable insights. It’s also essential for these professionals to make data-driven decisions to help clients achieve their objectives.
Business analyst
Business analysts are like data analysts, but the role focuses heavily on giving businesses suggestions on how to use data. Business analysts use various data analytics skills like data-driven decision-making, forecasting, and predictive modeling.
Project manager
Project managers must analyze industry trends and find solutions to potential problems. These professionals also need to manage projects within a company’s budget and ensure operations are working properly. Project managers must have skills in data structure, data analysis, and data visualization.
Steps to Learn Data Analytics
You can easily learn data analytics through online studying. Below is a step-by-step guide to learning data analytics.
1
Get Familiar with Database Tools
To get started with data analytics, you need to be familiar with basic techniques for collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data. It’s also essential to learn basic data analytics technologies like Excel and Tableau, as well as learning programming languages such SQL, Python, or R programming.
It can help to start getting familiar with these areas before starting more formal training. Once you are familiar with these concepts, learning more advanced data analytics will become easier.
2
Attend a Data Analytics Course
Attending a course in data analytics will help develop and formalize your skills. As well as learning database tools, data analytics courses cover things like statistics and analysis. They’ll also help you learn data visualization. This is a critical skill to learn in order to present and translate your data.
3
Master Your Skills
After learning the basics, you need to practice your skills. You can do this through online data analytics exercises and quizzes. When you test yourself, try to find real-world case studies to complete. This will help you understand how you would cope with real-world data analytics situations.
Another great way to master data analytics is to attend a coding bootcamp that focus on this subject. You can complete a bootcamp in less than a year and graduate with the skills needed for entry-level and mid-level jobs. Bootcamps with great data analytics programs include devCodeCamp, Thinkful, and General Assembly.
4
Connect With Peers in Data Analytics
Join communities, forums, and social media groups to connect with your peers and learn from experts in the field. Connecting with your peers can be a useful way to share data analytics resources, courses, programs, and career opportunities. You can also find work experience projects to work on.
5
Get a Freelance Job or Internship
Another way to build your professional experience is by interning or freelancing. Not all internships pay, but you will gain experienced mentors to learn from. Find out which companies offer internship schemes.
If you decide to freelance, you can earn some money while continuing to study and develop your expertise. Should you decide to choose the freelancing path, look for jobs on sites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Toptal.
The Best Courses to Learn Data Analytics
Online data analytics courses provide the same education quality as in-person courses, but you can study from almost anywhere. Below are the best online data analytics courses in 2021.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 2 years
Cost: $320 per credit hour
Outcome: Associate Degree
If you’re looking for a two-year degree program in data analytics, this course could be a good option. This associate degree program is made up of five core courses. These are database environments, programming languages, data policies, and data collection.
To fund this program, students can use scholarships, private loans, federal loans, and grants. There is also an online community. There are clubs, honor societies, leadership opportunities, and virtual events. You can also transfer up to 60 credits toward a bachelor’s degree if you choose to continue studying.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 4 years
Cost: $340 per credit hour
Outcome: Bachelor’s Degree
This four-year degree program focuses on business administration with a concentration in data analytics. In the data analytics concentration, you will learn data mining, data management, big data, business analytics, analytical reasoning, and data presentation. If you want to specialize in business data analytics, this program is a great choice.
You can fast-track this program to earn your degree in a shorter amount of time and pay fewer tuition fees. There are also financial assistance options available like grants, scholarships, tuition reimbursement, and military duty benefits. Colorado Technical University offers a range of career services as well.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 3 months
Cost: Varies
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
Students attending this course will learn the fundamentals of business analytics. The course teaches data visualization with Tableau, how to perform queries with SQL, and how to analyze and build data models. You will also use Excel to manipulate, analyze and visualize data, and learn to use statistics to find actionable insights.
To gain firsthand experience with these data analytics techniques, Udacity offers real-world projects led by industry experts. You can also access career services like resume support and LinkedIn profile optimization. Students can receive help from a dedicated mentor.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 5-10 weeks
Cost: $3,250
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
Through BrainStation’s self-paced course, you can learn about collecting, organizing, cleaning, and analyzing data, along with data visualization and presentation. You will use tools like Tableau, MySQL, and Excel to learn these concepts.
There is also a hands-on project offered in this course. BrainStation gives you access to lectures led by industry experts. It also provides interactive working environments and an intuitive learning platform. There are scholarships, payment plans, and tuition reimbursement options to fund this course.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 12 weeks
Cost: $39
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
Beginners can attend this program while working at their determined pace. Students will learn SQL, Excel, data-driven decision-making, data management, statistics, and data analysis. There are three courses in this program that teach fundamental data analysis techniques and statistics.
After each course, students will be given an assignment to test their skills. The course content includes articles, audio, and other activities. FutureLearn provides a learning platform that makes mapping your progress easy and allows you to collaborate with a global network of students.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 5 hours
Cost: Varies
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
For data analytics beginners, this short course covers data warehousing, data visualization, database principles, SQL basics, and data modeling. You will also learn about big data, and how to use Tableau to create charts and present your data analysis.
Pluralsight offers many resources for students. You can access webinars, live events, podcasts, blog articles, and guides.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 8 months
Cost: $6,555
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
Although the cost of this course is high, you will learn both the basic and advanced concepts required to be a professional data analyst. This program teaches you about preparing and analyzing data, data visualization, storytelling, databases, data mining, SQL, Python, and data ethics. You will work on real-world projects and create a portfolio.
CareerFoundry offers a job guarantee for this course, which means you will be employed within 180 days after graduating. You will also receive career preparation and resume-building help from a mentor.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 6 months
Cost: Free
Outcome: Google Professional Certificate
In this comprehensive course by Coursera, students will learn about analyzing data, data cleansing, SQL, and data ethics. You will also learn about collecting and organizing data, working with metadata, data visualization, and making data-driven decisions.
There is a hands-on project to build your skills and improve your portfolio. You can complete this course at your own pace. Earning a Google Professional Certificate is completely free and a great way to bolster your resume.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 11 hours
Cost: Free
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
In less than one day, you can learn about the role of data analysts and vital data analysis tools. A few of the topics you will cover are collecting, organizing, and interpreting data along with how the data ecosystem works. This course also teaches soft skills like how to communicate with stakeholders and present your analysis.
You will learn from video lectures, assignments, quizzes, and readings to help you. Coursera also offers hands-on projects for practical experience and instructor feedback on your assessments.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 3 hours
Cost: $299
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
You can take this self-paced online course to learn data visualization, analytics frameworks, different types of data, data science, and machine learning. After this course, you will know how to make data-driven business decisions and how varied industries use data analytics.
Students will work with data to solve real-world case studies. Students will have lifetime access to this course. Simplilearn has a library of e-Books and articles to help students.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 1 hour 39 minutes
Cost: Free
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
This data analytics course aims to teach you about data sets, creating workflow diagrams, cleaning data, and merging data sets for detailed reports. The content continues to define syntax, create a data dictionary, explain data fields, and demonstrate how to build pivot charts.
The LinkedInLearning platforms also include a Q&A section for live interaction and a notebook feature to store your notes. Unfortunately, this learning platform doesn’t offer many student services.
Level: Advanced
Duration: 3 years
Cost: Varies
Outcome: Master’s Degree
Do you already have experience in data analytics and a relevant bachelor’s degree? If so, you should consider this Master’s Degree in Data Analytics. You can study at your desired pace and fast-track this program to pay lower tuition fees.
This master’s program covers advanced data mining, data acquisition, data cleaning, predictive modeling, and exploratory data analysis. You must complete a capstone project, which will give you valuable practical skills. Students can opt to pay with GI Bill benefits, employer sponsorships, private loans, scholarships, and federal loans.
Level: Advanced
Duration: 1 year
Cost: $765 per credit hour
Outcome: Master’s Degree
Over nine courses, this master’s degree program will teach data analytics professionals about complex data visualization techniques, database principles, predictive modeling, forecasting, and programming languages. You will also work on real-world data analytics challenges to gain practical experience.
You need a bachelor’s degree to enroll in this program. Although Maryville University lacks career services, there are many student resources available. These resources include access to blog articles, infographics, industry news, and webinars.
Level: Beginner
Duration: 10 weeks
Cost: $3,950
Outcome: Certificate of Completion
General Assembly offers this short course to teach students how to mine, organize, clean, analyze, and visualize data. Students will also complete a real-world project to add to their portfolio. The instructors of this course offer real-time feedback and assistance to students.
Students can complete this course in one week by choosing the accelerated track. All students graduate with a professional portfolio. You can use private loans, tuition reimbursement, and installment plans to pay for this course.
Level: Advanced
Duration: 1 year
Cost: $29,280 per semester
Outcome: Graduate Certificate
Comprising four courses, this graduate certificate program is for skilled data analytics professionals. The courses cover data mining, data visualization, and data analysis with R programming and website analytics. You need a bachelor’s degree to apply for this course.
Students can study at their desired pace and complete this program within eight months. There are various financial aid options including GI Bill benefits, private loans, scholarships, tuition reimbursement, and graduate loans.
Best Data Analytics Resources
It’s important to connect with data analytics peers and continue developing your skillset. Below are some of the best data analytics resources and networks to give you a competitive edge in the field.
MeetUp
MeetUp’s Analytics and Data Science group connects data analysts and other data, science professionals. You can use this site to find in-person or online events that interest you. During the events, you can ask questions, learn about data analytics techniques and technologies, and meet other data analytics experts.
Analytics Vidhya
Analytics Vidhya primarily provides guides, tutorials, and boot camp programs for data analytics. There are also various discussions you can participate in. Users can also receive points for their interactions and contributions to the site. You can also find job listings for data analysts.
Cross Validated
Cross Validated is a platform for data analysts to ask and answer questions. The key topics discussed in this community include machine learning, data mining, data visualization, data analytics, and statistics. Anybody can join Cross Validated, and you can earn rewards and badges for your interactions on the site.
Why Learn Data Analytics?
Data analytics is an excellent subject to learn in 2021 because it is essential to so many job roles and industries. By gaining knowledge of statistics, data structures, machine learning, and business analytics, you will open up so many exciting job opportunities.
It’s very easy to study data analytics online. Aspiring data analysts don’t have to opt for years of studying either. So if you’re looking to make a change or accelerate your career, it’s never been a better time to take an online data analytics course.
