Learn to create narratives that transform your data into clear and compelling communications for any audience.

Data that sits in Spark or Hadoop or even a spreadsheet is not as powerful as data that is interpreted, packaged and communicated to those who need to hear what it has to say. Anyone who works with data needs to know how to effectively present that analysis to the people who will be making decisions based on the data. And it's not as simple as throwing charts at people. You need to create narratives and visuals that really connect with audiences.

In this course, we will cover data storytelling, data visualization and communications best practices - all with an eye to turning a raw set of data and converting it into a compelling narrative presentation that will resonate with your audience.

This course is intended for data AND communications professionals:

Anyone who works with data (data scientists, engineers, analysts, etc.) who realizes their analysis isn’t sufficient, that they need to improve their data storytelling to transform their analysis into results that matter; people who may not feel they are natural communicators but want to learn some key communication skills and how to apply them to data stories specifically
Communications professionals (PR, marketing, advertising, etc.) who may be very comfortable with communications generally but not so much with the specific skills needed to communicate data
The course begins with a very high level overview of basic communications challenges and a framework for solving those challenges. Then we focus in on "thinking like a communicator" - learning key skills like tricks to help turn any content into a narrative and tapping into an audience's emotions. After that, we focus more on the data - a VERY high level discussion of data analysis (this would be a course on its own) and how to turn data into stories. And then a brief review of visualization of data - how to pick the right chart for your data and some basic chart design tips.

This course is for beginners. It will get you thinking differently about communicating with data, whether you're a data person or a communications person. It is not intended as a deep dive into any of the subjects within, though it does provide many practical tips and skills that you can put to use immediately.

You will not need any specific software skills for this course. Whether you are a seasoned data analyst or a newbie, as long as you have an open mind and understand English, this course will be applicable to you.

The course consists of five sections of content with video instructions that are easy to follow and contain big ideas as well as practical guidelines. The lectures make up less than two hours of time, and four exercises in the course should take you anywhere from four hours and up, depending on how much you would like to devote to them.