This document provides an introduction to big data, outlining key concepts and objectives for the course. It describes the three main sources of big data as people, organizations, and sensors. It explains the six V's of big data and how they impact data collection, monitoring, storage, analysis and reporting. Finally, it outlines how students will learn to get value from big data through a five-step analysis process and summarizes the architectural components and programming models used for scalable big data analysis.