Continuing & Professional Education

Technology & Innovation

Gain an edge in your pro­fes­sion, explore cut­ting-edge indus­tries, pre­pare for a new role, or learn to use tech­nol­o­gy to increase your effi­cien­cy and reduce time spent on man­u­al tasks.

Our Tech­nol­o­gy and Inno­va­tion pro­gram­ming area offers soft­ware train­ing on a broad range of appli­ca­tions, from Excel and MS Project to InDe­sign and SketchUp. We also teach lan­guages like R and Python, as well as skill-based cours­es focused on big data, ana­lyt­ics, man­ag­ing IT projects, data sci­ence, and more.

                                                                                                                                       

Learn a new computer skill from scratch, or brush up on previous knowledge

Keep current with evolving tech trends, softwares, and best practices

Take individual courses without enroling in a full program

Courses are often open to everyone, regardless of skill level

Choose a schedule that works for you with daytime, evening, and weekend options

Get the guidance you need from industry experts

Software

Visualizing space in three dimensions (3D) is critical to the success of an interior decorator/designer. In this course, you will learn SketchUp, a prominent 3D design software, that quickly generates everything from rough concepts to evaluate scale, proportion, colour and texture, to working drawings and construction documents for production, all using a familiar pencil and paper paradigm. Most successful architectural firms with Interior Design or Decoration departments employ SketchUp software.
September 11
starts in 3 months
Online learning, synchronous. With Milan Krepelka
Details & register
Cad II is an extension of the lessons learned in CAD I. This project based credit course will focus on developing more advanced skills in generating two-dimensional drawings and three dimensional models, still primarily based in Google SketchUp. Students will develop a greater awareness of presentation skills using the software's built in animation features and creating working/presentation drawings with Google LayOut. Prerequisite: EXRI 3510
January 11
starts in 7 months
Online learning, synchronous. With Jonathan Sanderson
Details & register

Enhance the performance of your measuring, mapping, modeling, and monitoring by tapping the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Learn the concepts that drive GIS, the basics of cartography, and the differences between various GIS packages.

October 3
starts in 4 months
Online learning, synchronous. With Pierre Lardeux
Details & register
Adobe InDesign is a professional desktop publishing program that allows you to produce stunning, creative layouts for a variety of print and digital media, including books, reports, magazines, posters, brochures, to name a few. In this course, students will be introduced to the design interface, new document setup, and working with colour swatches. They will also gain knowledge in working with objects, frames, type, as well as importing imagery and graphics. Students will prepare their finished products for both professional print and digital viewing.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
Learn to apply many new features and techniques of InDesign that will help to automate the construction of complex multi-page documents so that the modifications may be completed in an extremely efficient manner. Students will also learn to integrate Photoshop, Illustrator, and Bridge with InDesign to prepare, place, and modify many different file formats for complete full circle workflow.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
This course is intended for new Microsoft Project 2016 users. Upon completion of the course, participants will be able accomplish the following: Understand the basic purpose and operation of the software by creating a new project, edit and outline a task list, as well as establish dependencies by linking tasks. Also covered in the course will be how to add and assign resources to a project, work with project calendars, and enter project costs, setting up and printing project information. Tasks, resource conflicts and tracking will be covered along with sorting, filtering and grouping and format views and Gantt Charts
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

The next step for business analytics students is to gain an opportunity to use the free software R to perform statistical computing. In this hands-on course, you will be introduced to data manipulation and visualization using the R language, primarily working with a set of packages knows as the tidyverse. At the end of this course you should be able to subset large datasets, apply functions to those subsets, fit simple linear and generalized linear models, and visualize the results in a publication-ready format.

Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
Implementing new IT business systems (or performing major upgrades to existing ones) is an inherently high-risk process. As a senior manager - you may need to ensure the success of a system project initiative - but you don't need to be a systems specialist to do so effectively. Designed from a business perspective, this course will help you to recognize specific risks to in-house developed, contracted, or cloud based solutions; understand the obscure language in project progress reports; and identify the warning signs of potentially impending failure for your system.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

AI

Understand the fundamentals of current technologies in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that are being applied to law. Discuss questions that arise from AI methods being used in law today. Learn about AI's effects on legal cases and legal business methods. Through a practical set of current examples, this course will help legal and policy professionals with non-technical backgrounds engage knowledgeably with AI technology at work. Topics may include, among others: Natural Language Processing (NLP) applied in law; how machines can understand legal languages; the state of the art of AI and Machine Learning applied in law.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
Aimed at legal and policy professionals with non-technical backgrounds, this course will help you understand how AI already intersects with the everyday life of your clients and community - and how you can best protect them - as you examine specific case studies that demonstrate how AI is now an ever-present background factor in divorce and family matters, employment, civil rights infringements, government services, consumer contracts, home security, healthcare, education, and much more.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
The recent and rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) has left many wondering how a business can best deploy theses technologies for maximum impact. This seminar, designed for business leaders and technical staff, will provide an applied understanding of the process and capabilities of AI, machine learning and data mining. Participants will work in small teams to conceive, present and refine and AI project of their choice and can expect to gain an introductory working knowledge of how to evaluate, validate and begin developing AI solutions for a chosen domain.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
This is a must-have course for professionals who are seeking foundational, conceptual, and technical knowledge in machine learning. Learn how to analyze the credibility of artificial intelligence/machine learning and its applications in business. Gain an understanding of unsupervised, supervised, and reinforcement learning, the three widely accepted categorizations of machine learning.
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

Big Data

Explore the use of analytical methods in management problem-solving, highlighting organizational and contextual issues. Construct an analytical model of a problem that can be manipulated or solved to identify a decision that yields the best outcome, according to one or more carefully defined criteria. The challenges of communicating and implementing results in an organizational context may also be explored through mini-cases and illustrations.

Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

Knowing how to extract real business value from the data generated by your organization is a valuable tool for all managers. Topics may include: foundational information on what is meant by analytics; the various types of analytics - descriptive, predictive and prescriptive; moving from business intelligence to business analytics; theories and trends in data analytics; and the latest best practices and tools available in business analytics, including their advantages and disadvantages.

Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

Gain an overview of big data, the state of the practice in analytics and the analytics lifecycle as an end-to-end process. Focus on the key roles of a successful analytic project. Topics may include: the main phases of the lifecycle; and developing core deliverables to stakeholders.

Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
In this hands-on course, you will focus on the application of fitting simple statistical models to data and experiments. The difference between descriptive and inferential statistics will be discussed, with the introduction of probability and data distributions. You will then fit simple models to data starting with simple linear regression, multiple linear regression and analysis of variance. By the end of the course, you should be able to interpret statistical models of how to report them. Prerequisite EXGEN 5449
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview
In part two of this hands-on course, you will focus on fitting more complicated models to data and experiments. The models that will be discussed are known as generalized linear models and mixed effect models. You will also learn about multivariate statistical tools, such as principal component analysis, as well as entering the field of predictive modeling using time series data and simple forecasting techniques. By the end of the course, you should be able to interpret, report and present the results of your statistical models. Prerequisite EXGEN 5454
Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

The next step for business analytics students is to gain an opportunity to use the free software R to perform statistical computing. In this hands-on course, you will be introduced to data manipulation and visualization using the R language, primarily working with a set of packages knows as the tidyverse. At the end of this course you should be able to subset large datasets, apply functions to those subsets, fit simple linear and generalized linear models, and visualize the results in a publication-ready format.

Not currently scheduled – new schedules announced each June and November.
Course overview

Social Media

Explore key concepts used by professionals to help grow your business or personal brand through online marketing and social media. Increase your knowledge of social media tools, website development and maintenance, web analytics, search engine utilization, basic content creation, and copyright. These transferable skills and strategies offer you the foundation needed to start engaging audiences across popular social media platforms.
July 3
starts in 1 month
Online learning, asynchronous.
Details & register
January 8
starts in 7 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Linda Brown
Details & register

Build an effective online presence through a strong marketing strategy that reflects your organizational culture. Learn about best practices for social media and marketing across various platforms, building and strengthening organizational reputation and brand online, strategic planning and development, how to build a social media following, and steps for executing an integrated strategic social media marketing plan.

August 28
starts in 2 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Brian Siddle
Details & register
March 4
starts in 9 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Brian Siddle
Details & register
Learn the language of analytics and its many acronyms as a means to measure where your web traffic is coming from, how much web traffic you are receiving, which messages are most effective and how to report on these measures. Identify useful metrics and describe how they can be analyzed to support business objectives, developing a reporting framework for effective communication. Create a website of your own and apply various approaches to analytics, including Google Analytics and ROI analysis in real-time.
May 1
already started
Online learning, asynchronous. With Dana DiTomaso
Details
October 30
starts in 5 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Dana DiTomaso
Details & register
January 8
starts in 7 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Dana DiTomaso
Details & register

Learn about how social media has provided new ways to create and experience media-rich narrative, as well as how the creative use of digital tools can offer exciting new possibilities for collaboration and sharing. Explore the essentials of storytelling and its use as an educational and marketing tool in this online environment. Discuss issues related to quality of content, memes, what it means to go viral and the quality of writing specific to the online environment.

July 3
starts in 1 month
Online learning, asynchronous. With Linda Brown
Details & register
October 30
starts in 5 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Adam Rozenhart
Details & register

Explore the etiquette, ethics, and various legal and policy issues that affect how we use social media. Discuss topics like copyright, privacy, intellectual property, fair dealing, creative commons, and the public domain. Learn how these issues play out differently nationally and internationally, as well as the implications of those differences for social media use.

March 4
starts in 9 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Raquel Mann
Details & register
Learn how to set up a fully functioning eCommerce store from start to finish. This course will walk you through the most up-to-date methods for creating an online store that is optimized for conversion and built to sell. In addition to setting up your homepage, collection pages, product pages, and sub-pages, we will also cover product photography/video, offer strategy, and copywriting.
May 1
already started
Online learning, asynchronous. With Scott Cunningham, Simon Trafford
Details

Learn how to identify, prepare for, and manage the risks inherent to a professional presence on social media, as well as to recognize the impacts of emerging problems elsewhere online. Explore best practices for policy, procedures, and guidelines for social media within an organization. Draw on learnings from traditional media and public relations concepts to prepare for and respond to emerging issues.

January 8
starts in 7 months
Online learning, asynchronous. With Adam Rozenhart
Details & register
Bursaries and funding opportunities
Funding source
Eligibility
Amount
Apply by
Canada-Alberta Job Grant 

Available for businesses in all sectors across Alberta

 Two-thirds of the training costs (up to 100% if hiring an unemployed Albertan)
any time
Canada Training Benefit 

Residents of Canada, 25-65 years old, who have $10,000-150,000 in earnings for work.

 $250+
income tax return
Skilled Immigrant Micro-Loan 

Whether you intend to work in the same field you trained in outside of Canada, or you wish to apply your transferable skills to a new career, this low-interest loan helps you cover the cost of education and related living expenses.

 Up to $15,000 loan
N/A
Alumni Professional Development Grant 

Any graduate of the University of Alberta

 Up to $500 anually
monthly deadline
HRDF 

Employed by the University of Alberta as Non-Academic Staff (NASA)

 $750 annually
Dec / Mar / Jun / Sep

Looking for something different?

Over 300 courses and 40 programs to help you build the skills you need.

  • Questions: techprog@ualberta.ca
  • 780-492-2408

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