Course Overview for the Predictive Business Analytics Certificate, Northwestern University School of Professional Studies - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

Program Courses

To earn a certificate in Business Analytics, you must complete the three core courses (BUS_ANLY 201, BUS_ANLY 202, and BUS_ANLY 204).* There is no admissions process for the Certificate in Business Analytics. Start the path toward your certificate by registering for your first course below.

* Students who began the program prior to the fall 2021 term must complete four courses to earn their certificate: BUS_ANLY 201, BUS_ANLY 202, BUS_ANLY 203, and BUS_ANLY 204.

PDP courses are offered online, remotely, and on-campus. Please refer to the Schedule Notes for course delivery information.

IMPORTANT: The registration process for all professional development courses requires you to register for your course and update your emergency contact information in CAESAR, Northwestern University's Student Enterprise System.

Tips for Troubleshooting Registration

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENT*:

Registering for multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a mandatory, integrated step to access Northwestern University systems. Northwestern uses the DUO Mobile smartphone application for multi-factor authentication. Steps to install the DUO Mobile App can be found here. Once you have completed the MFA registration process, you will have access to systems like CAESAR and CANVAS, Northwestern’s Learning Management System.

*It is a student’s responsibility to ensure access to Northwestern systems after registering for a PDP course. If you do not have a smartphone capable of downloading and using the DUO Mobile app, you may want to consider a YubiKey that can be purchased from several online retailers.

Please contact pdp@northwestern.edu with any questions.

BUS_ANLY 204-DL : Data Visualization, Communication, and Storytelling

Description

This course examines how to make business analytics an integral part of an organization’s decision-making process in order to create a competitive edge and generate value. Topics covered include promoting analytical thinking, building consensus, adopting smart metrics for project development, implementation, evaluation, and monitoring. Emphasis will be placed on the visual display of data and how to effectively communicate analytical and sometimes complex results to a mixed audience including clients, staff, non-technical leaders, and senior management. Various dashboarding and graphics technologies will be explored, and students will have the opportunity to work with examples depicting real scenarios from different industries such as finance, healthcare, retail, government, marketing, and sales. Each will also gain firsthand experience with making the case for analytics in front of an audience and presenting their analytical findings, actionable insights, added value for the business, and gained competitive edge.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Formulate data profiles and generate thoughtful actionable insights.
• Summarize complex analytical results into simple, encompassing, and convincing visual analytics.
• Create presentations for delivery to a mixed technical and non-technical audience.
• Create effective visualizations using best practices and synthesize them into illuminating stories.
• Illustrate the comprehension of data storytelling through the sharing of a video story with the class.
• Become familiar with using AI to improve visualizations.

Northwestern University School of Professional Studies is recognized by SHRM to offer 24 Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® Recertification activities.

Additional Information:

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course. This course assumes a basic understanding of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint or similar programs as a basis for navigating Tableau.

Students can take this course out of sequence (before completing BUS_ANLY 201 and 202).