Communications of the ACM
Five Online Classes To Pump p It Careers
Credit: Programme
An explosion in new online learning opportunities, many of them offered by prestigious universities, is making it possible for IT professionals to commit to a career of lifelong learning. Better still, many of these opportunities to upgrade tech skills or learn new programming languages are offered free, which makes it easier to sell a boss on the idea of taking online courses on company time. Five online classes are suggested for IT pros of varying backgrounds, including classes on applied cryptography, natural language processing, and social network analysis.
Courses on cryptography, such as a new Applied Cryptography class offered by Udacity, are now in demand as organizations both big and small reassess their views on information security. Even without the dramatic headlines of the recent NSA revelations, the everyday world now includes threats of malware, targeted hacks, social engineering, and other perils of digital business. The free Applied Cryptography class, taught by University of Virginia computer science professor David Evans, is aimed at people with programming experience and computer science knowledge, and it covers topics such as secure computation, secure commerce, and anonymizing online communications.
Making sense of the enormous amount of data generated by social networks has quickly become a major goal in the business world. Executives and marketers crave tangible, understandable information that they can add to a PowerPoint presentation or talk about on their next sales call. The University of Michigan offers a class in Social Network Analysis via Coursera. And though social sites are an obvious example, the course treats information of any kind as a possible network that can be mined for insights. No prior experience is required, though students who want to complete the optional programming assignments will need an advanced computer science background.
From Information Week
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