Courses & Certificates

The following is a list of courses and certificates I have completed or intend to complete.

  1. Cloud Services
    1. AWS Fundamentals
  2. People Management
    1. Managing Social and Human Capital
    2. Inspiring and Motivating Individuals,
  3. Strategy
    1. Oxford Executive Strategy Programme
  4. Project and Product Management
    1. UCI – Project Management Principles and Practices Specialization
    2. Google Project Management Professional Certificate
    3. Agile meets design thinking
  5. Other Courses
    1. Meta Front-End Developer Professional Certificate
    2. Learning how to learn

Cloud Services

AWS Fundamentals

By: AWS via Coursera , Date: March 14, 2021, Certificate

Duration: 1 Month

Course: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/aws-fundamentals

In this Specialization, learners gained proficiency in essential concepts,
services, and use cases within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud
ecosystem, including core AWS services and key AWS security
concepts. The Specialization also covered fundamental strategies for
planning and migrating existing workloads to AWS and how to build
and deploy serverless applications with AWS. Learners are given
opportunities to solidify their understanding by engaging in various
hands-on labs and exercises throughout the Specialization.

Courses completed:

  • AWS Cloud Technical Essentials
  • AWS Fundamentals: Addressing Security Risk
  • AWS Fundamentals: Migrating to the Cloud
  • AWS Fundamentals: Building Serverless Applications

People Management

Managing Social and Human Capital

By: University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, Certificate, Date: 2021, Duration: 7 hoursCourse: https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-social-human-capital

This course provides the theories behind managing people such as hetzberg’s two factor theory and vroom’s expectancy theory. The course briefly covers how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change the organization’s architecture.

Inspiring and Motivating Individuals,

By: University of Michigan, Certificate , Date: 2019, Duration: 14 hours

Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/motivate-people-teams

Course Description: In this course, you will learn how to create a shared vision for your team and effectively communicate it to your teammates. You will also learn how to set effective goals and expectations in a way that best enables your team to attain the shared vision. Finally, you will understand the most important needs and drivers of performance across cultures, and will learn to align rewards with desired behaviors so that your teammates are motivated to attain the team’s objectives.

Modules:

  1. Becoming a visionary leader
  2. Setting effective goals and expectations
  3. Understanding human needs and drivers of performance
  4. Aligning rewards and behavior

Strategy

Oxford Executive Strategy Programme

By: Oxford University, Certificate, Date 2023, Duration: 7 weeks

Course: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/programmes/executive-education/online-programmes/oxford-executive-strategy-programme

This was a rigorous course on how to effectively establish a long term and broad view strategy. The course involved learning about Oxford’s 4Ps for strategy development which are Purpose, Players, Partnerships, and Processes. A key aspect to broaden strategy development is scenario planning and developing playbooks to deal with different scenarios.

I wrote a blog post about the importance of combining evolving industry changes in developing your organizational strategy based on this course: Long Term and Broad View Strategy

Project and Product Management

UCI – Project Management Principles and Practices Specialization

By: University of California Irvine (UCI) via Coursera, Date: 2022

Duration: 1 month

Course: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/project-management

Project management has been proven to be the most effective method of delivering products within cost, schedule, and resource constraints. This intensive and hands-on series of courses gives you the skills to ensure your projects are completed on time and on budget while giving the user the product they expect. You will gain a strong working knowledge of the basics of project management and be able to immediately use that knowledge to effectively manage work projects. At the end of the series you will be able to identify and manage the product scope, build a work breakdown structure, create a project plan, create the project budget, define and allocate resources, manage the project development, identify and manage risks, and understand the project procurement process.

Courses:

  • Initiating and Planning projects – completed
  • Budgeting and Scheduling projects – completed
  • Managing project risks and changes – completed
  • Project management project – To be completed

Google Project Management Professional Certificate

Duration: 6 months

This is an in depth course in project management by Google.

Course: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-project-management

  1. Foundations of Project Management – completed
  2. Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project
  3. Project Planning: Putting It All Together
  4. Project Execution: Running the Project
  5. Agile Project Management
  6. Capstone: Applying Project Management in the Real World

Agile meets design thinking

By: University of Virginia, Certificate, Date: 2017

Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-getting-started-agile

Other Courses

Meta Front-End Developer Professional Certificate

Duration: 7 months

Course: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/meta-front-end-developer

I started this course to build more depth in frontend development as my experience has been predominantly in backend development.

  1. Introduction to Front-End Development
  2. Programming with JavaScript
  3. Version Control
  4. HTML and CSS in depth
  5. React Basics
  6. Advanced React
  7. Principles of UX/UI Design
  8. Front-End Developer Capstone
  9. Coding Interview Preparation

Learning how to learn

Certificate, Duration: 15 hours

Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

The course covers the neuroscience of how the brain learns most effectively based on various research papers. It helped me adjust my approach to learning. Key takeaways:

  1. Focused and diffused modes: The mind has a focused mode and diffused mode. The diffused mode is active when the you sleep or do something that requires less attention (sports, washing dishes, cooking). During that period the mind creates stronger neuron-connections.
  2. Chunking: Practice over time rather than all in one session. Take notes and attempt quizzes even when you’re not fully prepared to learn from mistakes.
  3. Procrastination: To reduce procrastination treat yourself to something nice when you accomplish a task. Write a task list to reduce the many things on your mind.
  4. Memory: To improve your memory ensure repetition. A common arabic phrase “Repetition teaches the donkey”. Whenever you recall a memory the hippocampus strengthens it.
  5. Mental models: To truly grasp an idea create metaphors or mental models to make it easier to remember.