10 courses to broaden your data literacy this summer

The coming days will see the beginning of a season of sun, heat, beach and, in many cases, more free time, which makes this season a perfect opportunity to expand our training on a wide variety of subjects, among which data, a cross-cutting subject in different sectors, cannot be missing.

There are an increasing number of courses related to Big Data, science, analytics and even data journalism that we find in the summer offers of training centres. There is a growing interest in further training in these subjects due to the high demand for professional profiles with these skills.

Whether you are a student or a working professional, here are some examples of summer courses that may be of great interest to broaden your knowledge during these weeks:

Data science

The University of Castilla-La Mancha is offering the course "Data science: impact on society" on 22 and 23 June at the Albacete campus, where the new ways of acquiring and using data resulting from advances in technology and artificial intelligence will be discussed.

This summer, the University of Deusto will offer online training on "Data analysis and applied machine learning". This course, which will begin on 27 June, will teach you to master the main technologies for analysing and processing large amounts of data, as well as some techniques to increase the value of the data analysed, promoting optimal decision-making.

The University of Alicante focuses on artificial intelligence with the course "Introduction to Deep Learning" from 11 to 15 July 2022, in classroom mode. The course will begin by explaining basic concepts and the use of basic and advanced packages such as NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn or tf.Keras, and then continue to delve deeper into neural networks.

The University of Alcalá de Henares will talk about "Introduction to financial data science with R" in an on-site course from 20 to 24 June. The aim of the course is twofold: to familiarise students with the use of the statistical language and to show some of the techniques linked to advanced statistical calculation, as well as its practical applications.

Open data

The Complutense University of Madrid offers, once again this year, its course “Big & Open Data. Analysis and programming with R and Python” from 4 to 22 July 2022 (mornings from 9:00 to 14:00, Monday to Friday). The course will cover the data life cycle, examples of Big Data use cases and ethics applied to the management of massive data, among other topics.

Geographic Information Systems

If you are passionate about geographic data, the University of Santiago is offering the course "Introduction to geographic information systems and cartography with the R environment" from 5 to 8 July 2022. In classroom format and with 29 teaching hours, it aims to introduce students to spatial analysis, visualisation and working with raster and vector files. The main geostatistical interpolation methods will be covered during the course.

The University of Alcalá de Henares, for its part, will give the course "Applications of GIS to Hydrology", from 6 to 8 July, also in classroom format. This is a practical course that covers everything from the different sources of hydro-meteorological data to carrying out evapotranspiration and runoff analyses and obtaining results.

Data journalism

El Institut de Formació Contínua – IL3 de la Universitat de Barcelona organizará del 4 al 7 de julio de 2022 el curso online en castellano “Bulos y periodismo de datos”. Esta formación de 8 horas de duración te aportará los conocimientos necesarios para comprender, identificar y combatir el fenómeno de la desinformación. Además, conocerás las herramientas esenciales que se utilizan en el periodismo de datos, la verificación de datos (fact-checking) políticos y la investigación basada en peticiones de transparencia.

Data protection

The Menéndez Pelayo International University will hold a course on "Strategies for data protection in the face of the challenges of the digital environment" on 4, 5 and 6 July. The programme is aimed at students related to the business world, the provision of digital services, public administrations, researchers and those interested in the subject. “Smart-cities and personal data processing” or “the European Data Protection Committee and the European initiatives of the digital package” will be just some of the topics to be addressed in this course.

Another of the training courses related to data protection that will be given over the coming months will be "Are our data really ours? Risks and guarantees of personal data protection in digital societies". The International University of Andalusia will be responsible for giving this course, which will be held in person in Seville from 29 August, and which will address the current situation of personal data protection within the framework of the European Union. Through this training you will discover the benefits and risks involved in the processing of our personal data.

In addition to this specific summer training, those users who wish to do so can also go to the large MOOC course platforms, such as Coursera, EDX or Udacity, which offer interesting courses on a continuous basis so that any student can start learning whenever they need to.

These are just a few examples of courses that are currently open for enrolment this summer, although the offer is very wide and varied. Moreover, it should be noted that the summer has not yet begun and new training courses related to the field of data could emerge in the coming weeks. If you know of any other course that might be of interest, do not hesitate to leave us a comment below or write to us at contacto@datos.gob.es.