IBM pushes analytics education

Updated on: Thursday, December 22, 2011

IBM is collaborating with universities in India and the rest of the world to promote the teaching of analytics. Aside from India, the company's Academic Initiative has programmes in India, China, Ireland and Scotland. The programmes aim to help students keep up with the job market by acquiring skills in this field of technology.

In India, IBM is working with faculty members from 500 universities to help more than 30,000 students develop skills in predictive analytics. As part of the programme, IBM will conduct a series of training programmes with business school faculty concentrating on predictive and business analytics, in 15 major cities throughout the country of India. The faculty members will complete a certification process in analytics at the end of the programme.

Once certified they will begin to teach students about how analytics can be applied to their topic of study. The learning will involve access to predictive analytics technology and will focus on how to act on the results the analytics technology uncovers.

"I have been using IBM predictive analytics technology in a number of programmes at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta," said Sahadeb Sarkar, professor, operations management group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM). "I hope this initiative will help teachers in universities to learn and include analytics in existing courses and design new curricula that will help students gain a top-notch education to meet the demands of today's businesses and government organisations."

Data deluge
Everyday people create the equivalent of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data from sensors, mobile devices, online transactions, and social networks; so much that 90 per cent of the world's data has been generated in the past two years. This amounts to more data than organisations can effectively use without applying analytics. The new programmes are providing students and faculty members, regardless of their course of study, with access to the latest software capabilities and thinking on how advanced analytics can be applied to tackle complex business and societal challenges.

According to the 2010 IBM Institute for Business Value and MIT Sloan Management Review study of nearly 3,000 executives worldwide, the biggest challenge is the lack of understanding in how to use analytics to gain insights that can improve business outcomes. In response to market demand, universities are incorporating analytics curricula and courseware into a variety of degree programmes to educate college students in this growing field.

The University of West Scotland is introducing several new courses to its School of Computing curriculum including data mining, business intelligence and knowledge management. Plans to expand the analytics course offerings to non-IT and non-finance students are underway.

Times of India

IBM pushes analytics education

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