Professional Data Science Programs & Online Courses
This archive gathers resources, institutional curricula, and references for professional Master’s degrees, capstone certificates, and online/blended statistical pedagogy.
1. Online & Blended Courses in Statistics
Online & Blended Courses in Statistics Online courses can reach thousands or millions. Blended courses mix online and face-to-face or group meetings, and must be somewhat smaller, reaching, tens to hundreds, maybe a few thousand. There are now a number of online courses with statistics content. It is unclear at this time about the quality of these courses, or how they might or might not be equivalent to courses at UW. It is also unclear whether certain statistical concepts and methods lend themselves to online courses at this time.
- UW-Madison & UW System
- Online Course Tools & Resources
- Online & Blended Courses in the News
- History of Online & Blended Courses
- Online Courses: Recent Statistics Offerings
- Other Online Resources
- Additional Pages
UW-Madison & UW System
- UW Essential and Social Distance Course Offering Report (Spring 2014) ⚠️
- UW-Madison to expand distance learning with Massive Open Online Courses (20 Feb 2013)
- Blend@UW: Blended Learning Course Redesign ⚠️
- Blended Learning Seminar Series, Fall 2012, UW-Madison ⚠️
- UW-Madison eText Pilot
- Educational Innovation, UW-Madison
- UW-Madison Division of Information Technology (DoIT) News Items
- UW-Madison DoIT Academic Technology
- Learning Support Services (L&S) ⚠️
- CoE Distance Education ⚠️
- Division of Continuing Studies (DCS)
- UW EducationProfessional Development (EPD)
- UW System eCampus Flexible Option
- UW Colleges Online
- UW Online Course Schedule Spring 2013
- Math 117: Elementary Statistics (3 cr, QR-B, not equivalent to any intro stat course)
- Math 240: Statistical Analysis (3 cr, QR-B, equivalent to Stat 224)
- Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID), UW-Parkside
- Madison beyond UW
Online Course Tools & Resources
- UW-Madison
- Learn@UW
- Moodle ⚠️
- Adobe Connect: Tech Tool for Live Interaction ⚠️
- Digital Media Center ⚠️
- Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL)
- Community of Educational Technology Support (ComETS) ⚠️
- UW Extension Distance Education ⚠️
- Blended Learning in Summer Session: Program for Instructors
- Blended Learning Toolkit ⚠️
- Columbia U
- Adobe Connect ⚠️
- Blackboard Collaborate ⚠️
- BlueJeans Multipoint Video Conferencing ⚠️
- Google: Course Builder Software
- Google Hangouts
- Apple: iTunes U Course Guidelines
- Udemy
- Desire2Learn
- ADL’s MASLO for Mobile Learning ⚠️ (caution: slow page load)
- ActiveLesson
- Communities of Inquiry ⚠️
- MIT Open CourseWare & edX Studio
- U Central FL Center for Distributed Learning & Blended Learning Toolkit ⚠️
- Center for Digital Education
- MediaSite (Sonic Foundry) ⚠️: Big Data? Manage Video ⚠️
- Guide to Online Schools ⚠️ | Online Schools & Learning Resources
Online & Blended Courses in the News
- The California Experiment (SJSU & Udacity)
- Scaling Back in San Jose: San Jose State U. resurrects scaled-back online course experiment with MOOC provider Udacity (Inside Higher Ed, Dec 2013)
- California University Leaders Now Skeptical on Online Solutions (Inside Higher Ed, Dec 2013)
- Higher education: UC President Janet Napolitano meets CSU, community college counterparts for the first time (SJ Mercury News, Dec 2013)
- After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought (NY Times, Dec 2013) ⚠️
- Rifts in the Valley: Faculty members at San Jose State U. urge outside review of institution’s governance (Inside Higher Ed, Nov 2013)
- Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun Changes Course (Fast Company, Nov 2013) ⚠️
- The Full Report on Udacity Experiment (Inside Higher Ed, Sep 2013)
- SJSU and Udacity: Poor Planning and Support, but Valuable Reviewing of Results (e-Literate, Jul 2013)
- San Jose State U. Puts MOOC Project With Udacity on Hold (Chronicle of Higher Ed, Jul 2013)
- MOOC mashup: San Jose State University – Udacity experiment with online-only courses fizzles (SJ Mercury News, Jul 2013)
- Udacity Project on ‘Pause’ (Inside Higher Ed, Jul 2013)
- San Jose State’s online college course experiment reveals hidden costs (SJ Mercury News, Jun 2013)
- San Jose State University Faculty Pushes Back Against EdX (Inside Higher Ed, May 2013)
- California to Give Web Courses a Big Trial (NY Times, Jan 2013) ⚠️ (SJSU News Release ⚠️)
- Reinventing Public Higher Education (SJSU White Paper, Oct 2012) ⚠️
- With Open Platform, Stanford Seeks to Reclaim MOOC Brand (Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 2013) ⚠️
- SPOCs: Small private online classes may be better than MOOCs (Slate, Sep 2013)
- Harvard plans to boldly go with ‘Spocs’ (BBC News, Sep 2013)
- Special Report: Learning in the Digital Age (Scientific American, Aug 2013) ⚠️
- SPOCs may provide what MOOCs can’t (University Business, Jul 2013) ⚠️
- MOOCs in the Community College: Implications for Innovation in the Classroom (Sloan Consortium, Jul 2013)
- Moocs? They’re a cracking good idea (Times Higher Educ, Jun 2013)
- HarvardX’s New Fall Offerings To Include Two SPOCs (Harvard Crimsom, Jun 2013)
- Online classes fuel a campus debate (NY Times, Jun 2013) ⚠️
- CIC Report on Online Learning Collaboration (Jun 2013) ⚠️
- Right to Educational Access Paper (Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, May 2013)
- Colleges Adapt Online Courses to Ease Burden (NY Times, Apr 2013) ⚠️
- Stanford teams up with edX/Three’s company (Inside Higher Ed, Apr 2013)
- edX Engineering Newsletter (Mar 2013) ⚠️
- The Professors’ Big Stage (NY Times, Mar 2013) ⚠️
- Coursera Adds 29 Schools, 90 Courses And 3 New Languages To Its Online Learning Platform (TechCrunch, Feb 2013)
- Wall Street Journal focuses on ‘no classroom’ UW program (Cap Times, Jan 2013)
- College Degree, No Class Time Required (WSJ, Jan 2013) ⚠️
- Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later, NY Times, Jan 2013 ⚠️
- Who Will Hold Colleges Accountable?, NY Times, Dec 2012 ⚠️
- Need 3 Quick Credits to Play Ball? Call Western Oklahoma, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec 2012
- The Year of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), NY Times, Nov 2012 ⚠️
- The Big Three MOOCs, at a Glance, NY Times, Nov 2012 ⚠️
- College of Future Could Be Come One, Come All, NY Times, Nov 2012 ⚠️
- UW-Milwaukee will be 1st system school to offer flexible degrees, WI St J, Nov 2012
- Virtual Learning 2.0: How will UW-Madison respond to online education?, Isthmus, Nov 2012 ⚠️
- Is Coursera the Beginning of the End for Traditional Higher?, Forbes, Jul 2012
- Considering Coursera’s Expansion, Inside Higher Ed, Jul 2012
- Universities Reshaping Education on the Web, NY Times, Jul 2012 ⚠️
- One Course, 150,000 Students, NY Times, Jul 2012 ⚠️
- New Foundations for Future Physicians (HHMI, 2009)
History of Online & Blended Courses
- UW-Madison’s eTEACH (1999-2012) ⚠️
- Greg Moses Talk on eTEACH ⚠️
- Technology, Learning, and Puppetry (Greg Moses, UW-Madison) ⚠️
- Greg Moses’ Peanut Butter & Jelly Online Course ⚠️ (warning: slow Flash technology)
- Google’s MOOC Guide
Online Courses: Recent Statistics Offerings
- Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (ASA) ⚠️
- Computational Methods for Nonlinear Systems (Cornell U) ⚠️
- Integrating Computing into the Statistics Curriculum (Deb Nolan, Duncan Temple Lang)
- Statistical Genetics I; Discrete Mendelian Traits ⚠️ (Elizabeth Thompson, U WA Seattle)
- Statistics Views Webinars ⚠️
- Coursera
- Elements of Statistical Learning (Trevor Hastie & Rob Tibshirani, Stanford U)
- Statistics 1 (Andrew Conway, Princeton U)
- Introduction to Data Science (Bill Howe, U WA)
- Data Analysis (Jeff Leek, Johns Hopkins)
- Computing for Data Analysis (Roger Peng, Johns Hopkins)
- Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp (Brian Caffo, Johns Hopkins)
- Model Thinking (Scott Page, U MI)
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (Daphne Kohler, Stanford U)
- Neural Networks for Machine Learning ⚠️ (Geoffrey Hinton, U Toronto)
- Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1 (Tim Roughgarden, Stanford U)
- Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2 (Tim Roughgarden, Stanford U)
- Computational Finance (Eric Zivot, U WA)
- Computational Investing ⚠️ (Tucker Balch, GA Tech)
- Financial Engineering and Risk Management (Martin Haugh and Garud Iyengar, Columbia U)
- Social Network Analysis (Lada Adamic, U MI)
- Udacity
- Introduction to Statistics (Sebastian Thrun, Stanford U, & Adam Sherwin)
- edX
- MOOCulus, OSU
Other Online Resources
- Great Courses
- List of MOOCs ⚠️
- Henry Stewart Talks
- iTunes U
- Online Universities
- CreativeLive
- Lynda.com
- Ted Talks
- TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing
- Eddie Obeng: Smart failure for a fast-changing world (World After Midnight)
- Daphne Koller: What we’re learning from online education (Stanford U)
- Scott Page: Putting Milk Crates on the Internet (U MI)
- Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks)
- Peter Donnelly: How stats fool juries
- Arthur Benjamin: Teach statistics before calculus!
- Hans Rosling:
- Chris Jordan: Turning powerful stats into art
- John Wilbanks: Let’s pool our medical data
- Ben Goldacre: Battling bad science
- Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers
2. Professional Programs in Data Science & Analytics
- 50 Years of Data Science (Dave Donoho, 2015) ⚠️
- Why R is Bad for You (William Vorhies, 2017)
- Data Science Program through UW Extension
- Women in Statistics (President’s Corner, Amstat News, Aug 2015) ⚠️
- Masters in Data Science List
- List of Data Science Bootcamps & Machine Learning Certificates (AnalyticsVidhya, Aug 2015)
- New Undergraduate Data Science Programs (Amstat News, Jul 2015 ⚠️ and Aug 2015 ⚠️)
- Q&A with Largest, Fastest-Growing Undergraduate Statistics Departments (Amstat News, Apr 2015) ⚠️
- A Peek into the Largest, Fastest-Growing Undergraduate Statistics Departments (Amstat News, Feb 2015) ⚠️
- In defense of statistics or why data scientists should make understanding statistics a priority (Rachel Schutt, Columbia Data Science)
- Data Science Central
- Data Management (DAMA) (WI Chapter ⚠️)
- Big Data National Initiative & News on Careers
- Data Strategy (Max Shron)
- Manga Guides: Romance, Intrigue and Science
- Doing Data Science (O’Reilly 2014: Cathy O’Neil, Rachel Schutt)
- Statistics Training: A Big Role in Big Data? (Amstat News, May 2014) ⚠️
- University-wide Big Data Institute to harness multi-disciplinary potential of data analytics (Temple U, May 2014) ⚠️
- Big data, big partnership: Ming Yuan (UW-Madison News, Nov 2013)
- As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry (NY Times, 31 Oct 2013) ⚠️
- IMS President Bin Yu on data science (IMS Bulletin, Oct/Nov 2013) ⚠️
- Can Your C-Suite Handle Big Data? (HBR Blog Network, 10 Oct 2013)
- Universities go in for Big Data (Wall St J, Aug 2013)
- Data Science: The Numbers of Our Lives (NY Times, Apr 2013) ⚠️
- Can Big Data Analytics Boost Graduation rates? (Information Week, 5 Feb 2013)
- Remaking the UW: David Krakauer calls for a new campus to lead a new world (Isthmus, 24 Jan 2013) ⚠️
- Big Data Education: 3 Steps Universities Must Take (Information Week, 15 Nov 2012)
- The state of analytics in higher education (Higher Ed Mgmt, 30 Sep 2012) (Alfred Essa on “Analytics | Innovation | Research” ⚠️) (Desire2Learn)
- A Wave of Analytic Innovation (Inside Analysis, 16 May 2012) ⚠️
- Arguably no technology is changing job functions within organizations more than analytics (Innovations Analytics) ⚠️
- Big Data & Analytics (Innovation Enterprise) ⚠️
- Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results (Thomas Davenport, 2010)
- The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics (Thornton May, SAS, 2009)
- All Analytics: Community for Data Management, Business Intelligence, and Analytics ⚠️
- Search Amstat Online for Analytics
- Career Success Training for Statisticians: A Progress Update (Amstat News, 1 Oct 2012) ⚠️
- Statistics in Business and Industry: The Path Forward (Amstat News, 1 Sep 2012) ⚠️
- The Emergence of Analytics in the World of Business Decisionmaking (Amstat News, 1 Sep 2012) ⚠️
- A Major Trend: The Rise of Undergraduate Programs in Statistics (Amstat News, 1 Aug 2012) ⚠️
- Maintaining Quality in the Face of Rapid Program Expansion (Amstat News, 1 Aug 2012) ⚠️
- MSU offers new degree program in Business Analytics (MSU Today, 25 Jul 2012)
- Using Statistics to Find Real-Life Solutions (Amstat News, 1 Jun 2012) ⚠️
- Colleges with Data Science Degrees (DataScience101, Apr 2012)
- Programs at Other Institutions
- AAS Smart Grid: Bringing More Students into STEM Disciplines ⚠️
- Higher Education Research Institute: Post-Baccalaureate Experiences, Success, & Transition
- 23 Great Schools with Master’s Programs in Data Science (MastersInDataScience.org)
- Big Data Analytics Masters Degrees: 20 Top Programs (Information Week, Jan 2013)
- Master’s Degrees in Analytics (Amstat News, 1 Sep 2012) ⚠️
- Graduate Programs in Big Data Analytics and Data Science (What’s The Big Data?, Aug 2012)
- Amstat Online: Programs in Big Data ⚠️
- Computer Science Online List of Data Science Programs
- What is Data Science? (UC Berkeley Master of Information and Data Science Program)
- CO St U Statistics Distance Degree Program & CO St U MS in Applied Statistics
- Cornell Stat Masters of Professional Studies
- ETH Zurich Statistics MS ⚠️
- Johns Hopkins Data Science via Coursera
- UIC Math List of Professional Masters ⚠️
- Center for Statistics and Analytical Services, Kenneshaw St U ⚠️
- Miami U Information Systems & Analytics ⚠️
- MSU Business Analytics MS
- U MO Applied Stat MS ⚠️
- NCSU Institute of Advanced Analytics ⚠️
- Northwestern U Analytics MS
- Princeton U Operations Research & Financial Engineering (ORFE) ⚠️
- Purdue U Non-degree Certificate in Statistics
- U SF Masters of Analytics ⚠️ & U SF BS Data Science ⚠️
- Stanford Professional Masters ⚠️
- Walton College Business Analytics Certificate
- Data Mining and Applications
- Quantitative Methods in Finance and Risk Management
- U TN Knoxville Analytics ⚠️
- U WA Computational Finance & Risk Management
- U WA Certificate in Data Science ⚠️
- UW-Milwaukee Project Management Certification ⚠️
3. Non-Traditional Student Programs & Professional Certificates
: Professional MS and Certificates
- Degrees in Data Analytics
- Types of Non-Traditional Programs
- Subjects for Traditional and Non-traditional Programs
- Online & Blended Courses in Statistics
- Other Programs and Links
Subjects for Traditional and Non-traditional Programs
Our department, in collaboration with other units on campus, has research expertise in several subjects that are “marketable”. We could enhance our traditional programs by offering new (or in some cases retooled) courses in these areas, including:
- Core Graduate Studies: Graduate programs at other institutions, particularly outside the US, want to send students to UW-Madison to learn our core graduate sequence. This training would enhance their in-country degree programs. This may best be served by a capstone certificate with 609-610 or 709-710 and 849-850.
- Uncertainty Quantification: Teach the quantitative characterization and reduction of uncertainties in applications. Focus on methods to determine how likely certain outcomes are in partially understood systems. Focus is on computer simulation modeling of complex systems. Develop this closely with faculty in other data science fields, notably CS and College of Engineering.
- Inference for Systems Genetics: We have several faculty who are involved in short course instruction at other institutions. We could readily develop our own Summer (Jun-Aug) or Winter (Jan) short course on this topic, likely drawing on faculty in Genetics and BMI.
- Mathematical/Statistical Finance: Core foundations (311-312 or 431) would be coupled with specialized courses in mathematical or statistical finance (to be developed). New courses could focus quickly on the study of spatio-temporal patterns (time series, GPS-like data structures) essential in financial decision making. This would ideally be done jointly with Mathematics and School of Business.
- Data Analytics
Other Programs and Links
Non-Traditional Students: Professional MS and Certificates UW-Madison has four professional masters integrated with campus offerings, some online: Masters of Engineering, Masters in Social Work, the Master of Arts in Information and Library Science, and Master of Science for Professional Educators.