Hello everybody,
My name is Karolina Hybska and in September I will be starting my fourth year at the University of Aberdeen where I study Politics and International Relations. This summer I have been interning as a data analyst at the University’s Online Education team and in this blog, I would like to tell you what I have been working on during the past two months.
It has already been nine weeks (out of ten) since I began my internship and I can assure you it passes by quickly. At least for me, as there have always been things to do, research, create, present and learn. I have been part of a young and innovative online education team and even though, the title of my internship might suggest that I have only been analysing heaps of data every single day, I have had a chance to add value to the team by working on a variety of tasks such as:
Secret Shopping
I started my internship by looking at competitor universities’ websites offering online courses trying to figure out what they do better than us. I focused on application and enquiry forms, response time, email formats and other things while comparing it with our own on-demand learning website.
Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Course
Since the first week, I have also been learning about digital marketing by completing modules from a Google-offered online course. As I have been progressing through the course, I have been presenting what I have learnt (and combining it with information gathered through secret shopping) to the rest of my team. Once I complete all of the 26 modules, I will be awarded a certificate of completion (which I hope will happen soon).
Student Data
My most time-consuming ‘project’ consisted of analysing student records data. After figuring out what specific information we would like to gather, the student records team provided us with two reports, and it was my job to analyse and visualise them. It took me some time to get my head around the data visualisation tool (Microsoft Power BI) I was using, but I am glad I did as it is another useful skill which I’ve learnt during my internship and which I will be able to use in the future.
Google Analytics
And the last of my ‘big projects’ was learning to use Google Analytics and transferring my knowledge onto the rest of the team, so that they could use it even after my internship is over. I am still working on this part as it is a very complex analytics tool, but I am really enjoying the learning process.
Summary
All these projects have been challenging, but thanks to them I have learnt lots of new things and acquired lots of new skills which I would not have acquired otherwise. I am grateful for being given a chance to become an Aberdeen intern and to be a part of the Online Education team. And I would like to encourage anyone who got all the way to here in this blog to consider applying for one of the Aberdeen Internship positions, because it is definitely worth it.
Thank you,
Karolina
