Friday, February 26, 2016

Collecting the right data isn't enough — colleges must know how to use it - Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Data collection around student performance has exploded in recent years, and many schools have figured out how to use the data to improve retention rates, make advising more efficient, strengthen classroom pedagogy, and offer the right services to meet student needs. But still, Jeff Ralyea, senior vice president of product management at Ellucian, sees that many campuses are lost. “What we have found is that the schools, even if they have the data, they just don’t know where to start in terms of using the data,” Ralyea said. Ellucian has been working on a set of guided analytics solutions that use heuristics to “teach” the program to anticipate desired analyses based on prior searches and user profiles. The higher education software and services company sees a strong desire for data-driven decision-making among its client institutions. This software makes it possible for a wider range of people to interpret the data in ways that can be meaningful for the organization. http://www.educationdive.com/news/collecting-the-right-data-isnt-enough-colleges-must-know-how-to-use-it/414040/