Course Review - Advance Certification Programme in ML and NLP by IIITB via upGrad

The programme is designed for intermediate to expert-level working professionals who want to cultivate their skills in AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) through industry relevant case studies and live webinars with industry experts and the faculty of IIIT-Bangalore. The programme offers 360 career support and peer to peer learning avenues so that a participant can be Industry ready. The course includes Machine Learning and NLP as its core domains and it takes a very focused approach towards NLP and has a steep learning curve that is focused on use cases rather than on theory alone.

Highlights

Key Features

The Advance Certificate Programme in Machine Learning and NLP offers deep insights while solving use cases that leverage NLP and ML algorithms. IIIT-Bangalore adds a strong value to one’s resume as it is backed by a strong college pedigree, alumni network and their pragmatic approach to learning. upGrad also ensures that this knowledge imparted is highlighted and put to use in terms of connecting the right skills with the right industry domains. Career support and role transitions are critical areas, when one is pivoting their career within emerging technologies. The course offers good value to one’s resume as well as learning practical problem solving using NLP, Machine Learning which is quite similar to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in terms of value addition to one’s skills . In this section we will discuss the content coverage, Mode of Learning, Target Audience, Learning Support and other key features.

Content coverage: The course has a good mix of live learning webinars (240+ hours), capstone projects and online tools which act as a strong platform for applied learning and career transition. The program offers a good mix of recorded content and live webinars ( 80 hours each ) while offering additional learning support such as doubt solving sessions and peer learning avenues during webinars. Some of the use cases, as per upGrad, are listed below.

• Investment Evaluation: Participants mimic an investment banker to determine greater value investments and avenues.

• Lending Club Case study: Risk assessment on customers and determining if the customers are eligible for loan based on their characteristics.

• Car Price Forecasting: A Chinese company wants to enter the US markets. Using suitable data determines what factors would influence their decision.

• House Price Forecasting: Analyze the Australian housing market to determine the factors affecting house prices and predict their future prices.

• Telecom Churn Case: Forecast customer churn and analyze data to understand how customer churn can be minimized.

• Part-of-Speech tagger project: Use the techniques such as POS tagging and Dependency parsing to extract information from unstructured text data

Mode of Learning: The program taught online in the form of live webinars and recorded learning content. There is active teaching of 80 (approx.) hours presented in the form of live conferences.

Target Audience: The target audience of the certification is Intermediate to expert. Moreover, the course does cover basic understanding of python and other concepts as well. The course augurs well for working professionals with strong aptitude and coding background. However, this is not a necessary skill to have. Applicants can begin with building a foundation first and then advance to learning more mature concepts.

Learning support: The members have full access to career couches, who recommend learning customized to one's need and bandwidth. The members will have full access to knowledge boards, alumni discussions, 1-1 coaching and learning sessions. However, no alumni status is offered by this program.

Price Aid: The program offers 0 interest EMI, corporate sponsorships and third party support for financing the learning journey. However, the program does not offer a fully funded scholarship program.

College pedigree: The course is supported by a strong lineage in terms of college pedigree. IIIT-B is considered to be the top private technical college by various ranking bodies.

What makes the course unique

The course covers projects which enable peer to peer learning and a practical overview of problem solving. Also, the programme offerings include personalized industry sessions (where a group of learners is mapped to an industry mentor) to promote peer group learning and provide extended industry support for a career transition. The course takes a focused approach towards NLP and covers all major aspects of this domain with a practical approach.

Course Offering

The following points cover the major offerings by the certification.

• Career transition with 1:1 expert sessions. The course also offers good collaboration avenues with industry experts who deal with organizational use cases.

• NLP focuses on case studies to offer deep insights into domain-specific problem solving.

• 80+ hours of live learning webinars by industry experts. Small group tutoring is also offered as an added support towards career transitions.

• 240+ hours of learning matter with a concentrated approach towards Deep Learning.

• The certificate is presented directly from IIT-B which offers strong value to one’s resume. upGrad name does not appear on the certificate.

Key discussion points

Value Addition: 80+ hours of live webinars and expert interaction, early-bird discount offering, concentrated learning approach, 1:1 career mentoring, group projects, alumni roundtable discussions.

Points to debate: Lack of discussion boards/platforms. No fully funded scholarships are offered, but one can opt for early bird discounts and 0 interest EMI. Alumni status is not offered by IIIT-B. However, one must keep in mind that this is just an eight-month course and most short certifications do not offer an alumni status.

Also read: Popular Machine Learning Certifications

Career Options

Data Analyst: In these times when there is a huge volume of data that can be used to make smart business decisions, the need for a data analyst is at an all time high. Data analysts primarily go through raw and unprocessed data in order to find business solutions for an organization.

Data Scientist: A data scientist is required to extract specific data by using various tools and methods to understand the information and help the management to make business decisions and help the organization in its various processes.