Usually I would have signed up to a summer school with the excitement of a new learning experience in a new country and meeting new people from all over the world. But Covid-19 sort of got in the way of that, although it didn’t manage to ruin my virtual experience!
I’ve just finished my second year of my Psychology degree and applied to take a two week course in ‘Big Data and Marketing Analytics’ with Toulouse Business School. I was hesitant to apply because I lack business specific knowledge (and can’t speak French!) but I was relieved to find out that lots of my course mates also studied different disciplines, so the lecturers approached topics from a level appropriate for us!
My two weeks of online lectures and tutorials were assessed using a group project. Surprisingly this virtual process was actually quite easy?! With the hardest part being trying to organise times, with my group living in Australia, Lebanon and Morocco! Together we had to create and present data visualisations using Tableau, as if we were advising a company’s marketing department on new profitability strategies. I’ll admit it took a little while to adjust to the weirdness of working as a group with girls that I had never physically met, but this didn’t stop us from getting to know one another and we all found it a bit weird that we’ll probably never meet!
My top tips:
- Don’t be scared to take a course outside of your degree discipline – the lecturers are considerate of your limited understanding and it is exciting to learn about something entirely new!
- Clear your schedule! Even though we are in isolation at the moment, my course did still take up a lot of my time so just be prepared that you and Netflix will be spending less time together.
- Zoom calls and WhatsApp became my life for the two weeks of my course so make sure you have stable WIFI – I learnt this the hard way…