Dale
Bidwell

"I currently work with data associated with managing and preventing quality issues. I highlighted the Data Analytics for Business course to my employer as I was interested in doing a master's degree and this course focused on an area in which I have an interest. A lot of the modules are centred on building skills and knowledge that can be recently applied at work which is real benefit.

In my current role I'm involved in producing systems around, and managing. smaller data sets. However there are a number of initiatives happening over the next few years that will allow my organisation to access increasingly large volumes of data. I foresee this course will help me put in place the right infrastructure to handle this change.

The course has allowed me to learn a lot around big data and cloud based computing, which is something I hadn't had much of an appreciation of before. It's been good to spend some time out of the 'day job' to think about how these new technologies could revolutionise what my company, and most other companies, are doing with data and IT infrastructure.This has resulted in me starting to look at how we as a company would move our current data and reporting systems to cloud based platforms. As well as this, I've started to use some techniques to analyse data in ways that I had previously been unaware of, which will hopefully bring out some useful insights.

Overall, I've found balancing the course workload with my professional commitments quite easy as I have received a lot of support, having been given time at work to go through coursework, time off to attend University and also spending time with my manager discussing how I could fit work based projects into future coursework."