Paid online courses should give employees grasp of IoT fundamentals
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has begun to offer an online course designed to give professionals a more thorough understanding of the principles behind the Internet of Things (IoT).
The course involved an introduction to the concepts around the technology as well as a roadmap of developments. The course will also offer lectures from the institute’s professors including ‘father of the web’, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
Sanjay Sarma, dean of digital learning at MIT and a professor of mechanical engineering, told Computerworld that the course are targeted at professionals who are “trying to think about the future of their companies”.
The course costs $495 (£350) and begins mid-April and end in late May. Completing the course and passing a final test earns students 1.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) in MIT’s professional education program.
Students are not expected to have a technical background to finish the course but should complete the course and have a grasp of the principles behind IoT as well as the architectures, applications, security and protocols that underline it.
It is not known how many people will pay the money and sign up for the course, but MIT has said that is can scale the course up into the thousands and use extra teaching assistants if necessary to handle any extra loads.
Andrew Kinder, UK IoT lead at Infor, told Internet of Business that the business motivation for this course is undeniable.
“Digitalisation of business is the new reality – already a $1 trillion global commerce business and over 50 percent of large companies have a digital strategy. IoT is one thread of the digitalised business model – connecting people, things and business and in 2016 alone spending on IoT hardware will exceed $2.5m (£1.77 million) every minute, by 2020 one million new devices will come on line every hour – a lot of interconnections, creating billions of new relationships,” he said.
He added that was a key caveat. “What the course will need to focus on is understanding that the value in IoT is not about gathering and storing the big data that comes with it – there is no value in data. All of those leaders above understand this. Data must yield something useful. The market will move quickly to the science/analytics that make something of the data to find new insights for management decision-making and new levels of automation for plant and equipment.”