How Learning AI Helped Bridged Mark Ruiz’s Technical Skill Gap

Contents

1. Initial Goals and Expectations
2. Course Effectiveness
3. Skills and Knowledge Acquired
4. Professional Impact
5. Future Goals

SECTION 1: INITIAL GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS

What specific goals or objectives did you have in mind when you enrolled in this course?

My goal was originally just based around the struggles that I was experiencing in my daily work. I was really struggling to figure out how to solve some problems in my current work with data – working with limited access to data sources and fulfilling reporting requirements needed in order to reach funding goals and all that. So that was the big goal for me – to figure out a way to utilize AI to help me to resolve those problems.

SECTION 2: COURSE EFFECTIVENESS

Can you provide specific examples of how the course content or activities aligned with your initial goals?

It was very effective… Because when I took the course, AI was still kind of emerging and I didn't really know how to work with it very well –what kind of questions to ask and things like that. So working with Aaron, he went over the fundamental processes of data analysis, which I was familiar with, but he went through it thoroughly which I was able to learn from. And he applied how to use AI through each of those steps, which helped me to see it from a much more fundamental perspective and figure out ways to apply it in the challenges that I was facing pretty quickly, while I was still in the class.

SECTION 3: SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED

What specific skills or knowledge did you gain from this course that directly contributed to achieving your goals?

So, the gaps that I had at that time was figuring out how to work with databases in the ways data analysts do, because my experience is primarily as a business analyst, right? I've worked with data analysis, but I wasn't one prior to the class, so getting hands-on experience working with the databases that he was able to guide us through, and learning how to do the data cleaning steps... But you know, I learned a lot from how he does it his own way, especially in the data transformation steps, because I was doing something similar, but I was doing it all in Excel – just using drop downs and filters – it was a manual process. So I've been learning that could be done with other tools.

How have you applied these skills or knowledge in your work or other professional situations?

What I'm using now is Power BI and Power Query, where you create formulas and functions that do the data transformation and it becomes automatic. Whereas before, every time we would export data, we would have to manually apply those steps, which is challenging in and of itself, time consuming, and it's also prone to human error. Everyone interprets things differently, so it was very easy to make mistakes. And now that I've learned how to use tools for data transformation, I've been able to apply those same things. For example, I know I need to have the age of a patient, but the data only gives me their birthday and the date of their visits to the clinics that I work for, and there's a couple different ways to calculate that: you could calculate that by using the days, and once you create the age then you have to get the age range. So, for adolescents versus adults and elderly, those age ranges have to be done specifically… Because it's in number format it has to be down to the decimal – to the hundredth of the decimal. So all those very specific things are now calculated automatically as opposed to being a manual process that could easily be done incorrectly.

SECTION 4: PROFESSIONAL IMPACT

Since completing the course, have you noticed any improvements in your job performance?

It's been pretty impactful, even though I am employed. I'm not out looking for work or anything like that. I still honestly haven't put up the course on my resume or on my LinkedIn yet. But when I took it to the work that I'm doing – to my manager who manages over a hundred individuals who all work remotely for different state organizations – she was very impressed. The work that I'm doing is not very common, and it usually costs a lot more money to solve these types of problems – it can be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the scale of the solution. And so, being able to utilize AI to generate the functions and the form that I need instead of having to type them out by hand, saves a lot of time. I've been able to move very quickly in creating solutions and proving its value to my clients.

SECTION 5: FUTURE GOALS

How has this course influenced or shaped your future professional goals?

It wouldn't say that it's impacted my goals, but it has impacted my ability to reach my goals. There was, or there still is, a big knowledge gap that I have in the fact that I don't code. I'm not someone who can just sit there and type out code and stuff like that. So, asking AI to create code for me to do the things that I need has kind of bridged that gap for me, and made me feel like I'm more capable of accomplishing my goals… You know, expanding my career into something more like consulting, and maybe even starting my own business.