The quality of the learning sessions was excellent says Sateesh Kumar Talupuri, an alumnus of the PGP Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Program offered by Great Learning. Read further to learn about his journey with the program in his own words.
I, Sateesh Kumar Talupuri, am a certified project management professional (PMP) and IT, Electronics & Communication engineer with an overall 29+ Years of experience. I have been heading a startup DiagnoSmart Private Limited as CEO for the last four years.
With the number of customers growing in healthcare services along with the number of appointments, tests and reports that are being generated at a rapid pace, the data that is getting accumulated and the need to analyse this data to extract useful, actionable information from that data is the next logical step to enhance the value of the startup. Apart from that, a lot of automation is required in healthcare services both at logistics, administration and diagnosis/instrumentation/clinical evaluation level. Artificial Intelligence plays a very important role in the automation of diagnosis and clinical evaluation. It increases productivity, efficiency and improves the workflow of the healthcare service. It aids in the decision-making process for day to day general cases as well as critical cases.
Our future plan includes building a health AI cloud to tend various services to stakeholders in the healthcare industry. Establishing a team, maintaining and executing it the right way requires full knowledge of the total workflow of AIML from data acquisition, data cleaning, data preprocessing to AI model generation and deployment. This is a very challenging task and needs proper planning that includes technical know-how along with many experiments. If not executed properly with confidence, the process is bound to fail, or the result will get delayed, which is not good for a Startup Company. So I decided to take up the right course, which, once completed, gives me the required confidence to take up the project of building a Health AI Cloud platform.
I did a bit of research about the courses available. There are various courses with different time durations, different formats, different content. Some courses are 45 days, some are for three months, while there are daily courses or just weekend courses. A few courses are online-only, while some are offline courses. Generally, I prefer self-learning by going through free online videos and courses. But as I know the complexity of the subject/topics of AIML, I am sure that any short term course of 45 days or three months is not enough. Not that they will not cover the topics, but there will not be time for practice and assimilating the knowledge with short term courses. The course structure shall be such that there is scope for one interaction, practice, assignments, industry orientation, peer networking, flexibility, and cover the latest trends in AIML. Another criterion was the certificate. It has to have good value in the market. Keeping all these criteria in mind, after thorough research, I made the decision to choose the PGP program in AIML.
The residency program of PGP AIML was tailored for structured learning with once in a month residency and every alternate weekend labs and assignments. The pace was comfortable for continuous learning and vigorous enough to challenge the student to learn more. The topics/syllabus covered were apt and industry-specific. I attended a few residencies and interacted with fellow students and faculty. The environment was very good for learning. The residency sessions were full days with sufficient breaks. The residency sessions were scheduled for two days or three days a month. The topics were fully covered. And repeat sessions were also conducted when there was a need. Apart from lecture sessions, the lab sessions, assignments, and hackathons were more helpful in retaining the knowledge which we gained through the lecture sessions. The shared materials and recording sessions were useful for reviewing whenever needed.
The quality of the learning sessions was excellent. The topics/program plan was very relevant to current industry trends. The basics were covered well. The flow of the program has been smooth and stimulating. The pattern of pre-reads, residency sessions, post-reads, hands-on lab sessions, assignments, and quizzes was very good for quantifiable learning. The tempo has been just right. The videos shared by the faculty of IIT Bombay and other faculty were very interesting and of a good standard.
Most of the time, the faculty were very knowledgeable and had outstanding command over the subject. They have practical hands-on experience. They can teach basics as well as advanced topics with the right momentum keeping the audience in mind. The sessions were highly interactive. The faculty has had the patience to answer all the questions and see that even a slow learner is able to understand the concepts. Program managers are good listeners, and there were many requests, demands, suggestions from students, and they were able to resolve the issues to create a workable relationship between students, administration and faculty. Both faculty and program manager made the learning process tension free which was important during the Corona pandemic.
The support has been consistently good during the course of the project. Whenever we requested to reduce the pace of the course or to schedule extra sessions for complex topics, the requests were obliged. Faculty were answering the queries related to assignments, evaluation etc. and were answered through emails. Queries resolved fast. Overall, we didn’t face many problems support wise.
Now I am very comfortable with the AIML topics. I am in a position to take up projects related to AIML and execute them confidently. It may be Supervised or Unsupervised machine learning algorithms or deep learning neural network algorithms. Anything can be handled and deployed in a production environment.
All students join the course enthusiastically, but it is very difficult to sustain the same passion during the entire duration of the course. The first priority of the student is to keep up their ardour throughout the course. Most of the time, it is all in time management. If they have to attend the course and also do a full-time job simultaneously, there is bound to be stress, and it needs a lot of discipline to balance between learning and job responsibilities. The student shall best utilise the opportunity given to them, which is the experienced faculty. They should be attentive and try to ask questions and clarify all doubts. They should be in constant touch with other students in their batch or other batches to keep the learning process active and up to date. Attendance is one more important aspect. 100% attendance is a must, as all sessions are tightly scheduled. If you miss even a session, a lot of the syllabus will be missed. However, recorded sessions will be made available. Students should definitely go through all pre-read material and have an understanding before attending lecture sessions. After that, post-read material can be viewed.
A lot of practice is required to gain the confidence to handle AIML projects. With discipline, hard work, and smart planning, required results can be achieved. All the best to the new great learners!
