Excel Power Pivot & Data Modeling: Build Models and DAX Measures That Scale
Signature Course No. 374 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Excel Power Pivot & Data Modeling: Build Models and DAX Measures That Scale course, in the Personal Effectiveness & Well-Being category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
Most Excel reporting fails in the same quiet way. The numbers live in a dozen sheets, each sheet is somebody's edited copy of the truth, and every new question means a new round of lookups, pasted values, and formulas that break the first time a row is inserted. Power Pivot and the Data Model exist to end that: load each table once, relate the tables to each other the way the business itself is related, and then write measures — named, reusable DAX formulas — that answer questions against the whole model at once.
It starts with structure. A fact table holds events at a stated grain — one row per sales line, one row per return — and dimension tables hold the descriptions you slice by: category, region, month name. Related dimension-to-fact in a star schema, the model holds because the facts live in one place and the logic lives in measures anyone can read. The model is not the report: build it for the business, not for this month's chart, and the next fifty charts become cheap.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Build a Model That Holds Together — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Model Specification and Audit; then, Module 2 — DAX That Scales — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The DAX Measure Library.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete model specification and audit for Pendleford Outdoor Supply: every table at its grain with its key, the standing totals tied to their breakdowns, the loading and relationship specification, both hierarchies with their pencil tests, and a five-pass audit, signed; and a tested DAX measure library for the same model: base measures and CALCULATE fixtures, the time pack proven against the standing months, shares, ranks, and bands proven in figures, and a test pack a stranger can re-run.
The honesty standard is part of the course. This course owns the in-Excel database layer only — the Data Model behind Power Pivot, its tables and relationships, its hierarchies, and the DAX measures that run on it. Worksheet formulas, ordinary PivotTables built on flat ranges, and Power Query's query-building belong to a neighboring course, and macros and VBA to another. And no figure asks to be believed on authority: the course runs on one model, Pendleford Outdoor Supply — six tables, 27,000 sales lines, $4,860,000 of sales — stated once, in full, so every measure, comparison, and capstone figure can be traced back to it and checked with a pencil.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Excel Power Pivot & Data Modeling: Build Models and DAX Measures That Scale is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with your last multi-sheet report. Say where the joining happened — in lookup formulas, in pasted values, or in your head as you typed — and what would break first if one source table gained a hundred rows; name one number your team computes in more than one place and say whether the places agree every month; and list the questions your readers asked last quarter that the report as built could not answer, and how many failed because the structure could not express the question. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Model Specification and Audit for Module 1 and The DAX Measure Library for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Structure first, formulas second — in that order, every time. Every DAX surprise in this course traces back to a Module 1 decision: a relationship's direction, a missing date table, a value stored as a column that should have been a measure. The course names the structural cause before it teaches the formula fix, because a measure that papers over a broken model breaks again at the next question.
Module 1 builds the model that holds together. Why a model beats a pile of sheets; the running model in full; loading clean, once; relationships and cardinality; filter direction and the ambiguity trap; keys, surrogates, and sorting; hierarchies that drill the way the business thinks; the measure-versus-column decision; and reading a model whole, the way an auditor reads it.
Module 2 writes DAX that scales. Filter context — how a Pivot cell decides its numbers; CALCULATE and context control; aggregation and iteration; time intelligence in two passes, period-to-date first, then prior periods, growth, and rolling windows; conditional and ranking measures; performance at scale; and the modeler's standard — documentation, testing, and what you sign.
And it holds its boundary throughout. The worksheet layer — formulas, flat-table PivotTables, Power Query's query-building — is taught in its own neighboring course, and VBA in another. This course is the layer underneath the report: the model that makes a hundred reports possible and keeps them all agreeing with each other.
What you will learn
- Design a Data Model as a star schema — fact tables, dimension tables, and the grain each table is kept at
- Load tables cleanly and relate them with correct cardinality and filter direction — and diagnose ambiguity when a model offers two paths
- Choose between a measure and a calculated column on purpose, and read filter context in any PivotTable cell before you trust its number
- Write DAX with CALCULATE to change filters deliberately, and aggregate or iterate with SUM and SUMX by where the value lives
- Build time intelligence on a proper date table — year-to-date, prior periods, growth, and rolling windows
- Control context with ALL, ALLEXCEPT, REMOVEFILTERS, and KEEPFILTERS; rank and band with RANKX, SWITCH, and DIVIDE; and keep the model fast, documented, and tested at scale
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Excel Power Pivot & Data Modeling: Build Models and DAX Measures That Scale, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Model Specification and Audit and The DAX Measure Library
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for analysts whose reports have outgrown flat tables
Analysts — who already live in Excel, whose PivotTables keep outgrowing flat tables, and who need one model that answers the next fifty questions, not fifty more worksheets; and finance and operations staff who produce the monthly pack and are tired of reconciling three versions of the same total in the same meeting.
Report builders and team leads — who inherit other people's workbooks and need to judge whether a model is sound, repair the ones that are not, and hand over models other people can safely run.
Business owners and managers with analyst fluency — who ask time-comparison questions ("against last year? for the year so far? for the best store?") and want to know what a correct answer requires underneath. This course assumes No. 114 or equivalent analyst fluency: worksheet formulas, ordinary PivotTables, and loading tables with Power Query are prerequisites, not content.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Why a Model, Not a Pile of Sheets
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Excel Power Pivot & Data Modeling: Build Models and DAX Measures That Scale is Signature Course No. 374. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.