Products and business models in today's competitive environment are increasingly being transformed by technology. This new digital economy places IT at the centre of firm strategy and operations, and requires a new breed of IT managers and leaders who can examine technology through a business lens. The Business Technology Management specialization will empower you with knowledge of the IT domain, management, leadership and team building skills, and functional and analytical skills. These skills are critical to leverage technology to create competitive advantage.

Construction Management is the planning, coordinating, and building of a project from conception to completion. This specialization is intended for Construction industry professionals, engineers, and architects looking to advance their careers. Students interested in learning about construction project management would also benefit from this specialization.

This Specialization explores several aspects of the new digital marketing environment, including topics such as digital marketing analytics, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and 3D Printing. When you complete the Digital Marketing Specialization you will have a richer understanding of the foundations of the new digital marketing landscape and acquire a new set of stories, concepts, and tools to help you digitally create, distribute, promote and price products and services.

In 2016, this was one of the top 10 specializations in terms of enrollments. INC Magazine rated the first course, Marketing in a Digital World, as one of The 10 Hottest Online Classes for Professionals in 2015. In addition, this course was also ranked in the top five courses across multiple MOOC providers. Finally, the Digital Marketing Certificate was the top coveted certificate on Coursera in 2015. This Specialization is part of the University of Illinois Masters of Business Administration degree program, the iMBA.

This specialization is a guide to creating your own business. We will cover a progression of topics necessary for successful business creation including: mindset, ideation, planning, action and strategy. Rather than just describing what to do, the focus will be on guiding you through the process of actualy doing it. The Capstone course will bring all of the tools and lessons discussed together for you to launch your business.

It may not be the business of your dreams, but it will be a functional business giving you the execution capability to start something you are passionate about.

This specialization provides a robust introduction to the key principles, policies, and practices of human resource management. The specialization begins with a foundational course that considers alternative approaches to managing human resources, provides a background to the U.S. legal context in which employees are hired, fired, rewarded, and managed, and outlines the different reasons that people are motivated to work.

The remaining three courses tackle three core areas that all managers should understand: hiring employees, evaluating their performance, and rewarding them. Throughout the courses, an accessible, scientific approach is embraced such that best practices and practical tips are informed by research, but presented in accessible, applied ways. Upon completing the specialization, learners will have a deeper understanding of what works in the workplace, including a toolkit of best practices for hiring, managing, and rewarding employees.

Design modern switched-mode power converters; create high-performance control loops around power converters; understand efficiency, power density and cost trade-offs By 2030, 80% of all electrical energy will be processed by power electronics. Professional advantages continue to grow for technical engineers who understand the fundamental principles and technical requirements of modern power conversion systems.

This specialization covers design-oriented analysis, modeling and simulation techniques leading to practical engineering of high-performance power electronics systems.

This Specialization builds on the success of the Python for Everybody course and will introduce fundamental programming concepts including data structures, networked application program interfaces, and databases, using the Python programming language.

In the Capstone Project, you’ll use the technologies learned throughout the Specialization to design and create your own applications for data retrieval, processing, and visualization.

In today’s marketplace, organizations need effective, profitable social marketing strategies. In this Specialization, you’ll learn to match markets to social strategies to profitably grow your business. You’ll use social media tools and platforms to design, manage, and optimize social campaigns to promote growth and position your brand in the global digital marketplace, and you’ll develop targeted content to spark dialogue with various social communities.

In the final Capstone Project, you’ll create and evaluate a comprehensive social marketing strategy. Each course also contains a toolkit with bonus materials – one for everyone who signs up, and a special toolkit with additional content for only those who sign up and pay to earn a Course Certificate. Each of the individual courses can be audited for free. Click on the following links to navigate to each course in this Specialization: 1-What is Social?, 2-The Importance of Listening, 3-Engagement & Nurture Marketing Strategies, 4-Content, Advertising & Social IMC, 5-The Business of Social.

This course covers the technical and management principles that are the basis of planning, implementing, and evaluating health programs for acutely displaced populations in developing countries. The emphasis is on refugees in camp situations. The course includes modules on assessment, nutrition, epidemiology of major health problems, surveillance, and program management in the context of an international relief operation. Course Objectives Upon completion of this course, learners will be able to: 1. Describe a complex humanitarian crisis in terms of magnitude, person, time and place. 2. Calculate basic epidemiology measures. 3. Evaluate the strengths and limitations of epidemiological data within the context of CHE. 4. Develop public health programs and strategies responsive to the diverse cultural values and traditions of the community being served. 5. Identify internal and external problems that may affect the delivery of essential public health services in a CHE. 6. Identify the different technical areas in a public health response in CHEs.

Whether you’re a high school graduate exploring manufacturing careers, or an operations manager hungry for an understanding of the newest manufacturing technologies, this specialization will provide a foundation in how digital advances are changing the landscape and capabilities of factories. Ten courses – developed with input from the manufacturing industry – touch on digital manufacturing and design practices, the concept of the digital thread, the Internet of Things and Big Data. To learn more about the Digital Manufacturing and Design Technology specialization, please watch the overview video by copying and pasting the following link into your web browser: https://youtu.be/r-VHiwsg_t0

Learners will create a roadmap to achieve their own personal goals related to the digital manufacturing and design (DM&D) profession, which will help them leverage relevant opportunities. The culminating project provides a tangible element to include in their professional portfolios that showcases their knowledge of Industry 4.0.

Take your first step towards a career in software development with this introduction to Java—one of the most in-demand programming languages and the foundation of the Android operating system. Designed for beginners, this Specialization will teach you core programming concepts and equip you to write programs to solve complex problems. In addition, you will gain the foundational skills a software engineer needs to solve real-world problems, from designing algorithms to testing and debugging your programs.

Centered around projects, this Specialization will help you create a portfolio of work to demonstrate your new programming skills. In the capstone you will create a recommender engine similar to those used by Netflix or Amazon. Additional projects in your portfolio will include:an interactive webpage that applies filters to images, an analysis of CSV data files, an encryption program, and a predictive text generator.

This Specialization covers the fundamentals of strategic financial management, including financial accounting, investments, and corporate finance. You will learn to evaluate major strategic corporate and investment decisions and to understand capital markets and institutions from a financial perspective, and you will develop an integrated framework for value-based financial management and individual financial decision-making.

The Financial Management Specialization is part of the University of Illinois iMBA Program. Each course in this Specialization also fulfils a portion of the requirements for a University of Illinois course that can earn you college credit.

When you complete the Financial Management Specialization, you will:

· Have a solid foundation in developing an integrated framework for strategic financial decision-making.

· Have a thorough understanding of financial statements and the financial information they provide, and be able to critically evaluate and analyze cash flows statements.

· Understand the management and evaluation of portfolios and firm valuation techniques.

· Understand how to incorporate risk and uncertainty into investment decisions and understand how companies make financing and investment decisions.

About this course: Volunteer community health workers (CHWs) are a major strategy for increasing access to and coverage of basic health interventions. Our village health worker training course reviews the process of training and continuing education of CHWs as an important component of involving communities in their own health service delivery. Participants will be guided through the steps of planning training and continuing education activities for village volunteers. The course draws on real-life examples from community-directed onchocerciasis control, village health worker programs, community case management efforts, peer educators programs and patent medicine vendor training programs, to name a few.

This Specialization covers the basics of hotel demand management, distribution, and revenue management. You’ll learn how e-commerce intermediaries such as online travel agencies are impacting the already-complex hospitality sector, and you’ll explore tools and techniques that will help you effectively market hospitality services and maximize business revenue in this new global industry landscape. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll evaluate the importance of hotel branding in business success through a hands-on, real-world case study. During the sessions, you will hear from senior hotel industry executives commenting on distribution, revenue and demand management issues. We will also interview two leading Online Travel Agents on how to maximise online business for your property, and have partnered with Duetto and SnapShot, two leading hospitality industry companies, to gain access to cutting edge knowledge, thus insuring that the competencies that you gain will make you operational immediately as well as bang up to date on industry trends.

This Specialization covers the basics of modern full stack web development, from UX design, to front-end coding, to custom databases. You’ll build foundational skills in a full range of technologies, including HTML/CSS, Javascript, and MongoDB, and you’ll learn to implement a reactive, multi-user web application using the meteor.js framework. We’ll also touch on more advanced topics, such as APIs, data visualization, and animation. Upon completing the Specialization and Capstone Project, you’ll have designed and launched your own fully-functioning, responsive web application.

This course explores why primary health care is central for achieving Health for All. It provides examples of how primary health care has been instrumental in approaching this goal in selected populations and how the principles of primary health care can guide future policies and actions. Two of the most inspiring, least understood, and most often derided terms in global health discourse are “Health for All” and “Primary Health Care.” In this course, we will explore these terms in the context of global health, their origins and meanings, the principles upon which they rest, and examples of how these principles have been implemented at both small and large scale. We will also explore some ultra-low-cost approaches to Health for All through primary health care, and the promise that primary health care holds for eventually achieving Health for All. Each module of this course consists of approximately one hour or lecture, approximately one hour of additional readings or video presentations, and two additional hours devoted to studying for each of the quizzes, writing and evaluating two short peer-review assignments, and participating in the discussion forums.

This course examines the community context of the changes needed to promote the public’s health. We begin by examining the various definitions of ‘community’ and the processes by which we ‘diagnose’ or seek to understand the structure and characteristics of different types of communities. An appreciation of community similarities and differences is necessary lest we fall into the trap of designing one-size-fits-all interventions. We need to recognize that no matter that outsiders may view a community as poor or neglected, we can find strengths and capacities for improvement in each community. Identifying community capacities and resources is the first step in facilitating community change. Different practical and philosophical approaches to change and therefore, examined. Specific to the change process is our recognition of the need for communities to participate in the design, implementation and evaluation of any intervention.

The Cloud Computing Specialization takes you on a tour through cloud computing systems. We start in in the middle layer with Cloud Computing Concepts covering core distributed systems concepts used inside clouds, move to the upper layer of Cloud Applications and finally to the lower layer of Cloud Networking. We conclude with a project that allows you to apply the skills you've learned throughout the courses.

The first four courses in this Specialization form the lecture component of courses in our online Master of Computer Science Degree in Data Science. You can apply to the degree program either before or after you begin the Specialization.