Eligible new students who start a Master of Business Analytics & Intelligence degree or certificate program in August, 2022 (Fall I Term) will receive a $1,000 scholarship applied as $250 for each of the student’s first four courses.
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Online Master’s in Business Analytics & Intelligence
ACQUIRE THE SKILLS TO DELIVER INSIGHTS AND IMPACT TO YOUR ORGANIZATION
Merrimack College’s fast, affordable, and convenient MS in Business Analytics & Intelligence teaches students the applied analytical skills needed to make data-informed decisions and to be an active leader in organizational change. No coding required – students will explore the latest analytical tools and learn to interpret data to solve business problems and communicate the “story” from the data to other stakeholders. Students can further differentiate themselves in the market by choosing to concentrate on a specific industry, like healthcare, marketing, sports analytics, or another area of interest. Complete your degree in 12-16 months for a total tuition under 22k.
Learners are set up for success at Merrimack College. You can complete your studies around your own schedule with convenient, online, asynchronous course material. Faculty are available to provide 1:1 support to ensure learners understand course concepts and materials. Students will also have access to tech support and a dedicated success coach to assist with the application process, course scheduling, and interactions with various campus offices.
The Business Analytics & Intelligence program was designed and is taught by academically qualified faculty with extensive industry experience. The courses are structured around solving practical problems using actual industry data and provide full immersion on relevant and important topics that go beyond theory.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-17 Edition & Glassdoor.com, Obtained September 2021
What Skills Will You Develop With a Business Analytics & Intelligence Degree?
To earn your Master of Science in Business Analytics degree, you will complete the 8 courses listed for a total of 32 credit hours. These courses help guide your advancement throughout the program as you improve through foundational, demonstrative, and applied program levels. Unique to this program, students complete four foundational courses followed by a mid-year capstone to demonstrate acquired knowledge and skill before delving deeper into specific industry applications in healthcare, marketing, sports analytics, or another area of interest. Students can complete their master’s degree taking courses over a period of 12-16 months.
Core knowledge courses
This course offers a broad introduction to the domain of business analytics, as seen from the perspective of evidence-based management. The course is comprised of two segments: Segment 1 introduces students to the foundational concepts of data analytic literacy, evidence-based management, and data analytic planning; Segment 2 engages students in developing a robust, hands-on knowledge of basic data preparation, due diligence, and feature engineering work.
The data manipulation part of the course uses real-life data files sourced from the industry, and students learn how to identify, plan, and execute a wide array of data processing steps using SPSS Statistics, a GUI (graphical user interface / point-and-click system) application used to manipulate, process, and analyze data. The course makes extensive use of practical examples and demonstrations all geared toward equipping students with theoretically sound but highly practically minded knowledge of why and how to prepare data to conduct meaningful analyses geared toward creation of decision-guiding knowledge.
This course offers a broad introduction to the domain of business statistics, as seen from the perspective of evidence-based business analytics. The course is founded on four principles:
- Help students see the relevance of statistics to their own careers by using examples from the functional areas that may become their areas of specialization;
- Emphasize interpretation and analysis of statistical results over calculations;
- Students will have ample practice in understanding how to apply statistics to business;
- Familiarize students with the use of data analysis software.
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of responsible data usage, practical exploratory data analyses approaches and techniques that address business questions and objectives, and statistical rigors of data validity and reliability to ensure quality of data insights. More specifically, it addresses data exploration utilizing practical statistical techniques, as well as topics of statistical inference, statistical significance, and outcome validity and reliability. The overarching goals are for students to be able to use data responsibly, to develop data hypotheses and a keen eye of relationship and pattern of the data examined, to extract data insights using appropriate data exploratory techniques and approaches, and to apply statistical rigors to ensure quality of measurements and data. Specifically, the following topics will be covered:
- Data usage and responsibility, including data security, privacy, and ethics and governance
- Exploratory and descriptive data analysis that effectively address business questions
- Using data to identify and describe unique and actionable segments to support business objectives
- Application of statistical inferences and rigors to ensure quality of data insights
Lastly, the course combines conceptual overview of data analysis and statistical reasoning, while also providing hands-on introduction to the practical side of data exploration using a real-life data file. The general instructional approach used in this course is one that casts exploratory data analyses in the context of the data to information to knowledge (i.e., insights) continuum and focusses on the science and art of extraction of decision- guiding insights from available data as a way of answering business questions, and making sense of data at hands.
This course completes the four-course sequence of Business Analytics Core Knowledge by offering a broad overview of means and ways of extracting decision-guiding knowledge out of available data. Framed in the context of data analytic literacy, Learning with Data offers 1. a conceptual overview of the changing face of how data are used to support organizational decision-making processes, and 2. hands-on immersion in commonly used business analytic approaches and techniques. More specifically, the course is built around four distinct elements of 1. overview of emerging strategies and modalities of data utilization and monetization, 2. hands-on introduction to informational utilities of exploratory and confirmatory data analyses, 3. hands-on introduction to applications of regression and classification techniques as means of extracting informative insights, and 4. example-based overview of the key design considerations and principles of effective data visualizations.
The data manipulation part of the course uses real-life data files sourced from the industry, and students learn how to identify, plan, and execute a wide array of data processing steps using SPSS Statistics, a GUI (graphical user interface / point-and-click system) application used to manipulate, process, and analyze data. The course makes extensive use of practical examples and demonstrations all geared toward equipping students with theoretically sound but highly practically minded data analytic know-why and know-how.
Capstone
The goal of this course is to offer a real-life project-based practicum, geared toward solidifying knowledge and competencies developed in the four-course sequence comprising the Core Knowledge part of the program. The course is a term-long hands-on project using industry data and focused on addressing specific industry problems.
Industry Immersion
The first of three Immersion courses, this course is built around hands-on, industry project focused on exploratory data analysis; an appropriately framed and scoped internship can be substituted for this course (prior approval of program director required).
The second of three Immersion courses, this course is built around hands-on, industry project focused on confirmatory data analysis / predictive analytics; an appropriately framed and scoped internship can be substituted for this course (prior approval of program director required).
The final of three Immersion courses, this course is built around hands-on, industry project focused on applications of business analytics, or more specifically, on using data analytic outcomes to support evidence-based management; an appropriately framed and scoped internship can be substituted for this course (prior approval of program director required).
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Where Can Your Business Analytics & Intelligence Degree Take You?
Potential career paths for graduates of the Master of Science in Business Analytics & Intelligence include:
Senior Business Analyst
Business Systems Analyst
Management Analyst
Source: Glassdoor.com, Obtained Aug. 2022
Yes! Tell me more about Merrimack’s Business Analytics & Intelligence degree!
MERRIMACK COLLEGE ACCOLADES
At Merrimack College, we’re proud of our long history of providing quality degrees to students entering the job market. Our faculty are more than just teachers. We are committed to helping you grow — academically, personally and spiritually — so that you may graduate as a confident, well-prepared citizen of the world.
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