Big Data Analytics

Program Overview

Big Data Analytics Ontario College Graduate Certificate program

Program Description

Big Data allows users to visualize past, present, and future patterns by linking and presenting information in meaningful ways. Data Analytics offers deeper insight into the meaning of data sets by telling the story behind the information. This enables stakeholders to make more informed decisions, predict trends and better understand the needs and sentiments of customers. This program provides students with a unique blend of theoretical knowledge and applied skills. Students learn how to collect, curate, manipulate, encode, and store data sets so they can be analyzed and mined in such a way that they can be reused and repurposed to solve present challenges as well as those that do not yet exist.

Intake Information

• Start date: Summer 2025, Fall 2025, Winter 2026, Summer 2026
• Campus: Barrie

Tuition and Fees

• Visit our tuition and fees page for detailed information on the cost to attend Georgian.
• Review additional program-specific fees for this program.
• You can afford this! Explore OSAP as well as awards, scholarships and bursaries to help you pay your way to graduation.

Admission Requirements

• Ontario College Diploma, Ontario College Advanced Diploma, Degree, or equivalent. It is recommended that the applicant have a specialty in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or business.

Career Opportunities

Graduates of this program are able to collect, organize and correlate data for a wide range of industries including government, applied research, human resources, health care, and sales and marketing. Leveraging prior background, skills and experience, students may be employed in roles such as Data Analyst, Business Analyst, BI Developer, ETL Developer, Database Developer, NoSQL Developer, Data Visualization Developer, Business Intelligence (BI) Specialist, Analytics Specialist, BI Solutions Architect, or Business Analytic Specialist.

Why Study at Georgian?

• The right time: Be among the first graduates in this dynamic and growing field of research.
• The right mix of skills: Learn the mix of technical, business and communications skills you need to succeed.
• The right experiences: Get the most from your education with our applied learning model, providing you with experience in working with organizations to help them solve real challenges in the community.
• The right connections: Benefit from the connections you’ll make with employers and expert faculty from the research analyst, computer studies and business faculties.
• The right place: Join the only college graduate certificate program in Big Data. Enjoy a collegial atmosphere, caring faculty and a nice campus setting in a small city with a reasonable cost of living and great quality of life.

Course Information

• 12 Program Courses
• Program-specific courses:
  • BDAT 1002 – Data System Architecture
  • BDAT 1003 – Business Processes and Modelling
  • BDAT 1004 – Data Analytics Programming
  • BDAT 1005 – Mathematics for Data Analytics
  • BDAT 1006 – Data Visualization
  • BDAT 1010 – Business Intelligence

Frequently Asked Questions

• Why big data? Big data analytics has been dubbed “the sexiest job of the 21st century” according to a 2012 article published in the Harvard Business Review.
• What is big data analytics? Big data analytics refers to the process of extracting meaningful insights that support decision-making by examining very large and complex sets of data.
• What are some real-world examples of big data and how it is used? There are many examples, but here’s just a few: In the energy sector, the Weather Company is currently using big data analytics to help utility company managers better predict, plan for, and respond to weather-related risks to infrastructure assets, thereby improving efficiency and delivering better service to customers.
• What does a big data analyst do? Analysts working in the field of big data use a mix of business knowledge, analytical abilities, technical expertise, and communication skills to collect, interpret and communicate findings from the analysis of big data to support decision-making, often within organizations.
• What skills do big data analysts need to have? Employers have been clear that in hiring a big data analyst, they are looking for a combination of business, technical, and people skills.
• How can I learn all that? Georgian College has launched a one-year graduate certificate in big data analytics, designed to equip students with the right mix of technical, business, and communications skills to launch a career in this field.
• What are some of the specific things that will be taught in the program? The program includes courses on data manipulation, information encoding standards, business processing modelling, mathematics for data analytics, data visualization, among other related subjects.
• Do I need to know a lot about math and computer programming? It helps to have some background in that, but you don’t need to be an expert. That’s what we’re here for!
• What are the career prospects like in big data analytics? The Big Data Analytics program was developed based on input from leaders in industry, academia, and government. We know it is designed to provide people with skills that are in high demand. There are currently more than 1,200 open positions for data analysts in the Toronto area alone posted to LinkedIn, with more than 2,600 positions available across Canada.