All started with the email….

… I was accepted to the first phase of the Bertelsmann Technology Scholarship — Data Track. The email further went on to state that

“The challenge begins on Nov‍ember, 2‍0th 2‍01‍9”.

Feeling great about this new chapter beginning, as well as the opportunity to study and learn new skills for future career opportunities.

I now had an additional daily challenge alongside work and family (I have 2 beautiful daughters and wife). How do I manage all these commitments? It’s been a while since I have been in an education environment. This is was going to fresh experience.

Slack is the platform where students engage with each other to introduce each other, ask questions, answer questions, motivate, celebrate, study, form study groups etc. Udacity team called Community Managers are also on the slack platform to monitor communications and support the students.

On the first day of the challenge, the slack platform was buzzing with activities as everybody (~4,500+ students) were introducing themselves and eagerly waiting for the official class to start.

The official kickoff/orientation was via zoom and a lot of students signed on about 1 hour early asking the same questions:

• Are we in the right place?
• When does it start?

Finally, we get introduced to the Udacity team Palak, Jordan & Grace who explained the course expectations, slack usage and classroom. A previous graduate was present to share a few useful tips to help us be successful in this phase and move to phase 2. After the kickoff, we all moved back to slack platform where Palak and Jordan asked a few ice breaker questions.

I signed into my Udacity classroom to see I was automatically enrolled into the Bertelsmann Tech Scholarship Challenge Course — Data Track Nanodegree Program. I was prepared with my pen & paper to take notes (so many lessons). My journey has officially begun.

There are three criteria that determine successfully moving on to Phase 2:

• Application
• Completion of the course material on Statistics, Data tendencies, Python and SQL
• Participation within the slack community

Slack community participation criteria is a “top secret” for the Udacity team.

I participate where I can and have helped my fellow scholars.

A fellow scholar by the slackhandle Datagirl (Tobiloba Adaramati), created a course tracker that showed a nice overview of the lessons and time required. Together we made the tracker a little more visual with a sort of dashboard. Available on the air table.

Original: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ma2mi_1j5BCHkk6igDx8IqS1HA2kXrorQfRVSoetxXI/edit#gid=0

Dashboard Ver: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SXGLAu4QNc_YTGXYCLNrocclA0QxFlerXUdyjqteUi8/edit?usp=sharing

Involvement in slack is a great way to tackle the course and connect, I have connected with many scholars and the information shared is invaluable.

Also don’t be shy to ask, or reach out to the community.

An example of awesome community help is when one of the tests in the course video didn’t work, and the community came together and shared what worked for them.

Managing the course alongside daily commitments can be difficult, I liked the Study planner, bite-size with a 2-week horizon, few things that worked for me.

• Create the study plan
• Study at the same time every day. (get a routine)
• Have an environment that is relaxing.
• Do not get comfortable on the couch and turn on the tv. (causes me to relax too much and takes away the motivation to study)
• I also uninstalled a few games that I enjoyed. (limit distractions)

I planned to study for 1.5 hours daily and ended up spending 2–3 hours which included studying/watching the videos, participating in Slack and further readings to improve my knowledge and understanding.

These small increments of time I have invested have turned out to be rewarding. I have learnt so much in the last 2 months.

An initiative the Udacity Community Managers introduced is the #60daysofudacity challenge. This means, for 30mins a day (for me this 30 mins, turned into 1hr plus) you study. This is a great motivation tool that shows commitment to the course program. We also share the Day we are on as well as what we have studied for that day.

Some of the topics covered in the Statistics and Data tendencies courses are Data Research, Visualizing, Central Tendency, Variability, Standardizing, Normal and Sampling Distributions.

How to visualize data, and calculates those means and averages. I really enjoyed and have a much better understanding of how and what the graph visual is telling us.

I enjoyed learning about how to visualize data, compute means and averages and I have a much better understanding of the stories graphs tell.

The course expanded into the standard deviations and z-scores, This was the challenging initially but with the method and simplicity of the videos, the calculations were stress-free and I was able to take the grasp the concept.

Python

Wow, this is so cool, having a very basic understanding of programming, I was excited about this learning and getting the program to practise my programming skills.

The course structure starts off simple and complex progressively. The way the material was presented helped us understand the content very well. It also helped clarify not only the technical programming aspect of Python but why it used in Data Analysis and Data Science.

As extra motivation, I would like to give a shoutout to my fellow coursemates: Kathrin, Stefan, Vijaya, Magdi who shared some links for my daughter can get started.

SQL

Similar to Python, the course structure started simple and increased in complexity making this a great learning experience.

Having little to no knowledge of SQL, this course has given me a great insight into the workings of queries, and a better understanding of tables and JOINs. Certainly a skill set I can utilize in the future.

Overall the course content is very well presented and structured, I am really enjoying every minute of studying through Udacity. There’s also quite a number of side content and further reading. The slack community is great and very welcoming and helpful.

Based on what I have learnt and the future possibilities in professions, I have already started looking for additional courses in the path of Data Analysis / Science. Before this course, I had an interest in data, and it has magnified with this course.

Now it’s time for me to go back to those games, I uninstalled. I play video games to relax; based on my new disciplined routine, I will limit the time I spend playing games to continue my learning into a new career path.

If I am not selected for Phase 2, I have already learnt so much in the challenge phase.

Many thanks and appreciation to those on the slack community and those who I have personally connected.

#Udacity team #Bertelsmann

Jonathan Papworth