Welcome to Tech-Moms' Data Analytics & AI Course! You'll learn the core skills of a data analyst — and how to use AI to work smarter, from analyzing data to making videos and automations.
👩🏻💻 Alyson La — Instructor
- 📊 Bookkeeper -> Data professional, educator, and analytics consultant with 10 years in accounting/data @ GitHub
- 🤖 AI enthusiast extraordinaire — loves using AI to make data work smarter
- 👩👧👦 Mom of 2 who believes women can build amazing careers in tech
👩🏼💻 Kelsey Taylor — TA
- 📊 Works in Data & Business Intelligence at Health Equity; Tech-Moms graduate and success story
- 👩👧👦 Mom of 3 who knows firsthand what it's like to learn tech while raising a family
- 💕 Back with Tech-Moms to help other women make the same career transition
This 12-week course is designed to help you transform from a beginner to a skilled data analyst — while also learning how to leverage AI to work smarter. Through video lessons, class time, and hands-on projects, you'll learn how to analyze, interpret, and visualize data using a variety of the most common analytics tools, alongside practical AI skills. You will also create an online portfolio to showcase your new skills.
By the end of this course, students will be proficient in using Excel and Google Sheets for data manipulation and visualization, capable of writing and executing SQL queries to extract and manage data from databases, and adept at utilizing Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Tableau, Looker, and DOMO for creating insightful dashboards and reports. Students will also learn to leverage AI for data analysis and other tasks. Hands-on projects simulating real-world data analytics work will prepare students for roles in data analysis, business intelligence, and data-driven decision-making across industries.
💻 Online
- Wednesdays: 7–9 PM
- Saturdays: 9–11 AM
🏢 In Person
- Once a month on Saturday, 10 AM–2 PM
- 📍 Dates and locations announced in Slack — attendance strongly encouraged. If an emergency comes up, we'll try to make class available on Zoom.
In-Class Learning — Weekly lectures and live demos covering:
- Excel & Google Sheets: Formulas, data cleaning, pivot tables, dashboards
- SQL: Querying, data manipulation, advanced techniques
- BI Tools: Dashboards & reports in Looker, Tableau, & Domo
- AI Fundamentals: How AI/LLMs work, prompting, leveraging in data analytics, & hands-on challenges
Weekly Work — Each week includes a required data assignment plus an optional AI challenge to go deeper - expect approx 10 hours per week of homework outside of classtime.
Guest Speakers — Saturdays, hear from Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Data Team Managers, and AI Practitioners about their day-to-day work and career paths.
Capstone Project — During the final month of the course, you will partner with a local business or non-profit to analyze their data and deliver a report/dashboard, optionally using AI tools along the way.
Expectations - Students are expected to notify their instructors via Slack if they are unable to attend class or complete the weekly assignments on time.
Subject to change! Modules are released each Saturday for the following week.
| Week | Week Of | Class Description | Format | Homework |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kickoff | 8/16 | Orientation — Meet your classmates and instructors, get set up with all course tools, and learn how the course will run. | In Person, Sat 8/22 | Complete orientation materials |
| Week 1 | 8/23 | Data & AI Foundations — Intro to the data analytics field and core AI concepts you'll use throughout the course. | Virtual (Wed 8/26 / Sat 8/29) | Complete Module 1 on GitHub |
| Week 2 | 8/30 | Advanced Excel/Google Sheets — Go beyond the basics with advanced formulas, data cleaning, pivot tables, and dashboarding. | Virtual (Wed 9/2 / Sat 9/5) | Complete Module 2 on GitHub |
| Week 3 | 9/6 | Tableau — Build interactive visualizations and dashboards using one of the industry's leading BI tools. | Virtual (Wed 9/9 / Sat 9/12) | Complete Module 3 on GitHub |
| Week 4 | 9/13 | SQL — Write and execute queries to extract, filter, and manage data from databases. | Virtual (Wed 9/16 / Sat 9/19) | Complete Module 4 on GitHub |
| Week 5 | 9/20 | DOMO — Learn this all-in-one BI platform for data integration, visualization, and reporting. | Wed 9/23 virtual / Sat 9/26 In Person | Complete Module 5 on GitHub |
| Week 6 | 9/27 | Looker — Explore Looker for data modeling, reporting, and dashboard creation. | Virtual (Wed 9/30 / Sat 10/3) | Complete Module 6 on GitHub |
| Week 7 | 10/4 | Data Storytelling — Learn to turn analysis into a compelling narrative that drives decisions. | Virtual (Wed 10/7 / Sat 10/10) | Complete Module 7 on GitHub |
| Week 8 | 10/11 | Choose Your Adventure — Dive deeper into a tool or topic of your choice based on your interests and career goals. | Virtual (Wed 10/14 / Sat 10/17) | Complete Module 8 on GitHub |
| Week 9 | 10/18 | Real World Analysis Kick Off — Start your capstone: choose a real business or non-profit to analyze. | Wed 10/21 virtual / Sat 10/24 In Person | Choose a business or non-profit for your dashboard/analytic report |
| Week 10 | 10/25 | Real World Analysis Project — Dive into your data, build your analysis, and start shaping your deliverable. | Virtual (Wed 10/28 / Sat 10/31) | Work on your final project and prepare your presentation |
| Week 11 | 11/1 | Real World Analysis Project — Refine your dashboard/report and prepare to present your findings. | Virtual (Wed 11/4 / Sat 11/7) | Work on your final project and prepare your presentation |
| Week 12 | 11/8 | Final Project Presentation & Graduation 🎉 — Present your capstone project and celebrate completing the course! | Wed 11/11 virtual / Sat 11/14 Graduation, In Person | Finish your final project and present at graduation! |
Leveraging AI — Use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and/or other tools as your study buddy and data tutor for explanations, feedback, and assignment support.
GitHub — Fork this repo, track your progress in each Module README (check off tasks weekly), and sync your fork regularly:
- Click "Sync fork" at the top of your repo
- Click "Update branch" to pull in changes
Always open for class, office hours, pair programming, study groups, and working together.
👉 Zoom Classroom is pinned in the Important Links folder in Slack
Office Hours (held in the Zoom Classroom):
- Alyson: Thursdays, time TBD
- Kelsey: Thursdays, 8–9 PM
Missed class? All recordings are on our Tech-Moms YouTube playlist.
AI is absolutely encouraged — it's an important part of today's data careers.
- Use AI as a teacher, not a shortcut. Ask it to explain concepts, troubleshoot errors, walk through problems, or quiz you — not just generate something to copy and paste.
- Understand it. Verify it. Make it your own. AI can be wrong; evaluating its output is part of becoming a strong data professional.
- Cite your AI use on assignments, projects, analysis, or code — use it openly, not secretly. E.g., "I used ChatGPT to help troubleshoot my SQL query and explain the error."
- Lecture videos & tutorials
- Class Slack
- GitHub repository (materials, assignments, projects)
- Data Analytics Resource Repo (plus your own)
- VS Code
- A second monitor
- Ability to download Tableau (optionally Power BI)
Our #2026-fall-data Slack channel is home base — ask questions, troubleshoot, share resources, and help classmates. The only stupid questions are the ones you don't ask! 💕
- Fork this repo
- Join the Slack channel
- Review the syllabus above
Excited to have you on this data + AI journey. Let's do this! 💪 ⚡️