Coursework

Relevant Coursework

Completed Courses:

Digital Solutions Studio:

In Digital Solutions, I gained a new perspective on design. By learning about human-centered design and other principles from Don Norman, I began to interpret design in a different way. I realized the importance of incorporating the user’s needs and wants in the design process, working in an iterative manner that allows improvements, and collaboration across all departments involved with the final product. I used the concepts learned from Norman as a guideline while redesigning a website. I was assigned tagteamsigns.com as the site to redesign. I learned how to use genesis WordPress to create a new site that represents the changes I would make to the original site. Click here to see my final project.

Enterprise IT Architecture:

In this course, I learned how to navigate Amazon Web Services. I learned best practices for security, redundancy and latency in a network. I opened a virtual private cloud (VPC), connected it to an internet gateway, and attached appropriate private and public subnets in different availability zones. In the VPC, I also created security groups, launch configurations with auto-scaling groups, a load balancer, and a secure connection to a relational database. In this VPC, I launched instances connected to these components, and created a scalable application that retrieves information from the client, brings it back to the server as a database query, and returns the result of the database as an alert for the client. I learned how to code in node.js and strengthened HTML and Javascript skills.

Data-Centric Application Development:

In this class, I learned the fundamentals of many different coding languages such as HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, JSON, jQuery, AJAX, and API. This course provided me with insight on the practicality and importance of coding for a business and what kind of things can be created with coding. It also helped me create a foundation which will aid me in learning other coding languages in the future.

Data Analytics:

This course gave me an introduction to databases, ER diagrams, database schemas, and other data management tools, such as the SQL software, R studio, with Tableau Prep. Some of the data analytics skills I gained from this course include writing and understanding SQL syntax for inputting/altering or returning desired information from a database, ETL (extract, transform, load) with Tableau Prep, data visualization, using Excel to summarize large volumes of data, and implementation of language from R studio to return statistics on information from a data file. I also learned about the aspects of data analytics and how to apply them, in order to make business decisions.

Information Systems in Organizations:

In this course, I gained an introduction in the basic concepts of Information Systems, such as the use of entity relationship diagrams, customer relationship management, and data analysis. I executed the creation of diagrams, systems, and utilization of applications such as Salesforce to gain a better understanding of these concepts.

How courses relate to career interests:

These courses have exposed me to different fields that I can go into for a career in technology. Since information technology is such a varied field, I have an advantage because I have a varied introduction into many of sectors of IT, instead of a specialization of skills in one niche position. This approach has allowed me to choose a specialization for my career based on the different strengths that I have gained from these courses. Also, I can choose a sector that aligns to my interests.

N0t only have I been exposed to different technology sectors, but I also have gained many technical skills in these courses. I learned how to query databases, write code in multiple different languages, and create the architecture of a virtual private network, design a website tailored to the experience of the user, and many other useful technical skills. After choosing the sector that I would like to pursue my career in, I can leverage my variety of skills to make myself stand out as a strong candidate.