Category Archives: Certificate

I had some time on my hands, and had a cold over the past few days and was staying in. So I decided to follow up on my new years resolution and to do a few more online courses, and I availed of LinkedIn Learning’s week of online courses. There is a vast array of courses, so I decided initially to do some Business courses, and as a technologist I reckon it is good to get some more business knowledge.

LinkedIn Learning Business Courses

• Accounting Foundations – a three hour course with a quiz at the end of a section, I found this quite useful a refresher on some secondary school accountancy with an american twist.
• Financial Literacy: Reading Financial Reports – course took a couple of hours and goes through the various Financial Statements and what comprises them. I really enjoyed this course and thought it was valuable.
• Finance Essentials for Small Business – a 90 minute or so course, with some good points about managing a small business.
• 5 Tips for building your Financial Life – a short few videos on personal financial goals, very obvious and not as valuable as the earlier courses.
• 5 Personal Finance Tips – another short few videos on personal finance just pretty obvious tips common sense.
• Business Math – a few hours of mathematics for business, comprehensive if quite basic, useful if you don’t have a background in math, some interesting analogies and examples.

After going through a few of the business type courses, I decided to do a few Social Media App courses to top up or refresh my skills particularly on the mobile focused social media technologies.

• Twitter Essential Training – basic yet comprehensive introduction to twitter, takes about a couple of hours to go through, i enjoyed elements I scarcely use, like moments and lists, I actually found it very useful.
• Learning SnapChat – a social media platform i hardly use, but again a thorough introduction to SnapChat, so I found it beneficial.
• Learning Instagram – another social media picture and video platform, one which i use from time to time, a comprehensive overview of Instagram from ground zero, I found the sections on filters and manipulating a photo interesting. Only negative is the examples are using the older version of Instagram but beneficial nevertheless.
• Content Marketing : Social Media – another short course, more tips on and general overview of using social media for marketing.
• Learning Slideshare – a full introduction to Slideshare perhaps favoured by its parent company LinkedIn. I have only used it previously for sharing notes and accessing notes from other courses.
• Social Media Marketing : Optimization – takes about an hour a overview of SMM ideas on different platforms and guidelines to optimise use of Social Media. A good reminder of best practices using Social Media.

As a Science graduate with a post-graduate qualification in numerical modelling and simulation, I do like data analysis

• Learning Data Analysis – again another general course but it does go quite well into the subject. It did take me sometime to adjust to the accent and some of the terminology changes over the years, but i found the course salient. It would encourage you do skill up and do courses in the number crunching and presenting technologies like Excel, Python and SPSS as well as further study of Statistics and Data Analysis.
• Python for Data Science Tips, Tricks, & Techniques – took me an hour or so to complete this course, and using the Anaconda Jupyter python environment with the exercises worked a treat. A great course to get your hands dirty and use csv, json and python libraries ggplot and pandas etc.
• Data Science and Analytics Career Paths and Certifications: First Steps – A comprehensive overview of the disciplines and roles and background information. The course was a couple of hours but of great benefit if you were interested in a career in the subject.

Personally the courses i found the most valuable were the Python Tips, and the Financial Literacy and Accounting Foundations courses.