EDUCAUSE | Institutional Research

CNI Podcast: Sigrun Eckelmann on the German Research Foundation

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:27:41 +0000

Sigrun Eckelmann is Program Director for Academic Libraries & Information Systems at the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this interview she described the programs she works with at DFC, the factors driving Germany's funding of research, and her work with Virual Research Environments (VRGs).

Sequestration and the Re-launch of "Science Works for U.S." Website

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:25:36 +0000

Last week, APLU, AAU and The Science Coalition officially re-launched the website www.ScienceWorksForUS.org. This joint project aims to help demonstrate the "tremendous impact that federally funded university-based scientific research has on the nation and on the lives of all Americans."

The site has been reworked in order to address the impact that sequestration will have on federally funded university research, and to demonstrate the importance of this research to society at large. The site is meant to serve as a resource for media, policymakers, and R&D stakeholders, and includes state profiles that show the projected amount by which sequestration will reduce federal funding for academic research and development for universities.

2012 ECAR Study of Analytics in Higher Education

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:21:42 +0000

ECAR RESEARCH HUB, PUBLISHED JUNE 22, 2012

Author: Jacqueline Bichsel

Analytics in Higher Education: Benefits, Barriers, Progress, and Recommendations

The objectives of this research were to assess the current state of analytics in higher education, outline the challenges and barriers to using analytics, and develop a maturity index to provide a common means of assessing progress in analytics.

A Collaboration Between:

Report and Supporting Materials

Report

Infographic

Slide Presentation PPTX

Data Tables

Maturity Index

Survey Instrument

2012 ECAR Study of Analytics in Higher Education is publicly accessible thanks to generous support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Supporting Research through the Development of a Data Management Plan Service

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:32:04 +0000

Campuses are keenly aware of the need to adequately provide support services for research activities at all stages of development. This session will discuss how campuses can realign to support researchers throughout the data management plan life cycle, addressing how to develop an administrative model for these services and other concerns.

Case Study 4: Yakima Valley Community College: Using Near-Real-Time Data to Increase Student Success

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:46:44 +0000

Yakima Valley Community College (YVCC) created a web-based data analysis tool with pivot table functionality that enabled YVCC personnel to access data related to placement, enrollment, and course completion. The data are disaggregated by ethnicity, gender, location, and mode of instruction. Faculty and their department heads use these data to analyze curricular areas, to strategize activities to increase student success, and to help monitor their own progress toward accreditation goals. Data are updated regularly, providing near-real-time information.

White House Initiative Highlights "Big Data"

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:00:39 +0000

On March 29, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) held an event to announce the launch of a "Big Data Research and Development Initiative." Largely building on existing federal agency programs and projects, the initiative as described in a White House press release seeks to coordinate and enhance efforts across the federal government to:

Analytics that Inform the University

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:21:19 +0000

This session will describe the Center of Distributed Learning's top-down/bottom-up approach to using data for strategic decision making at the University of Central Florida. The process capitalizes on existing institutional data by designing responsive extraction models that facilitate an understanding of how the distributed learning initiative impacts virtually all aspects of the university. The top-down approach collates information about programs and modalities and the degree to which colleges and departments have implemented online initiatives. The bottom-up approach provides continuous monitoring of outcomes attributable to distributed learning. This session will demonstrate that (1) much extant university data can provide analytic insights, (2) analytics can be instrumental in strategic planning, (3) large data sets do not have to be daunting, and (4) systemic data collection and analysis is advantageous.

Lessons from the Field: Making a Culture of Inquiry Work for You

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:56:25 +0000

Join Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, and Veronica Diaz, ELI associate director, as they moderate this webinar with Rob Johnstone from the Research and Planning Group. The RP Group works with community colleges in California and across the country to gather, analyze, explore, derive insight from, and act on a wide range of research, evidence, and analysis. While numerous groups exist in the community college landscape that crunch numbers, the RP Group is unique in that it has a 10-year history of working on projects that make data and research authentic and real for community college practitioners. This is facilitated by the fact that they themselves are primarily practitioners from the community college sector.

Most recently, they’ve have worked on three major projects that have provided strategic thinking, technical assistance, professional development, and a unique lens into the world of community colleges:

The Bridging Research, Information, and Cultures (BRIC) grant worked directly with California community colleges to further develop cultures of inquiry designed for action
Completion by Design, the national Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–funded initiative to design innovative pathways to completion for community college students
The Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, designed to shine a light on community college excellence as well as identify the key features that lead colleges with higher completion rates to success

EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 46, Number 6, November/December 2011

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:59:24 +0000

This is the entire issue of EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 46, Number 6, November/December 2011.

Doing Academic Analytics Right: Intelligent Answers to Simple Questions

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:57:12 +0000

This ECAR research bulletinexplores the various factors that must come together for an institution to have an academic analytics infrastructure that is flexible, agile, appropriately structured, and cost-effective. It examines not only appropriate technologies but, more importantly, the critical roles that stakeholders and governance play in setting the stage for success. There is a tremendous amount at stake for American higher education right now. How can IT facilitate—and motivate—our institutions to adopt the tools that can help mine the gold that resides in our very own vaults?

Citation for this Work: Ravishanker, Ganesan (Ravi). “Doing Academic Analytics Right: Intelligent Answers to Simple Questions” (Research Bulletin 2, 2011). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2011, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

E10 Interview: Oliver Gruter-Andrew, CIO for the University of British Columbia

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:42:11 +0000

Oliver Gruter-Andrew, CIO for the University of British Columbia, talks about research, openness, priorities, and cloud computing in this interview with Colin Currie, Executive Director of Administrative Information Services at Princeton University.

The End of the Long Tale: Designing and Implementing a Unified Communication and Collaboration Framework for Research and Scholarship at UAB

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:42:41 +0000

Supporting the growing needs of the research infrastructure is a top priority at UAB. In late 2008, the university formed a Council for Translational Research, bringing together senior researchers and scholars campus-wide with key administrators in a plan to enhance the research infrastructure to meet the institution's expanding operational and business needs and UAB's image as an internationally renowned research university. As a result, the council formed a subcommittee to review the current methods used to disseminate information and to identify ways to enhance and improve future communications and collaborations among researchers.

Institutional Data Management in Higher Education Roadmap

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:37:27 +0000

This ECAR roadmap synthesizes the important issues and recommended actions drawn from the study Institutional Data Management in Higher Education, by Ronald Yanosky. The study examines the policies and practices by which higher education institutions effectively collect, protect, and use digital information assets to meet academic and business needs. Importantly, it also explores the impact of the “data big bang” on colleges and universities and the way information technology (IT) organizations deal with it. While the overall guiding concept is data management, the definition of data management that informs this study refers broadly to information assets in digital form. The study takes a multi-part approach that includes a literature review to examine data management frameworks and definitions and to define issues and establish research questions; consultation with higher education IT administrators and data management experts to identify and validate survey questions; a quantitative web-based survey of EDUCAUSE member institutions that received 309 responses, 78% of which were from the institution CIO or equivalent; qualitative interviews with 23 higher education IT leaders and staff; and two case studies, one examining a sensitive data risk reduction initiative at the University of Virginia, and one concerning Chronopolis, a multi-institutional grid-based project for the long-term preservation of research data.

Citation for This Work: Yanosky, Ronald. “Institutional Data Management in Higher Education Roadmap” (Roadmap). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, December 2009, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Institutional Data Management in Higher Education

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:17:48 +0000

This 2009 ECAR study of institutional data management examines the policies and practices by which higher education institutions effectively collect, protect, and use digital information assets to meet academic and business needs. Importantly, it also explores the impact of the "data big bang" on colleges and universities and the way information technology (IT) organizations deal with it. While the overall guiding concept is data management, the definition of data management that informs this study refers broadly to information assets in digital form. The study takes a multipart approach that includes a literature review to examine data management frameworks and definitions and to define issues and establish research questions; consultation with higher education IT administrators and data management experts to identify and validate survey questions; a quantitative web-based survey of EDUCAUSE member institutions that received 309 responses, 78% of which were from the institution CIO or equivalent; qualitative interviews with 23 higher education IT leaders and staff; and two case studies, one examining a sensitive data risk reduction initiative at the University of Virginia, and one concerning Chronopolis, a multi-institutional grid-based project for the long-term preservation of research data. A corporate edition is available here.

Citation for this work: Yanosky, Ronald. Institutional Data Management in Higher Education (Research Study, Vol. 8). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2009, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Institutional Data Management in Higher Education—Key Findings

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:54:35 +0000

This document presents the key findings from the 2009 ECAR study of institutional data management, which examines the policies and practices by which higher education institutions effectively collect, protect, and use digital information assets to meet academic and business needs. Importantly, it also explores the impact of the “data big bang” on colleges and universities and the way information technology (IT) organizations deal with it. While the overall guiding concept is data management, the definition of data management that informs this study refers broadly to information assets in digital form. The study takes a multi-part approach that includes a literature review to examine data management frameworks and definitions and to define issues and establish research questions; consultation with higher education IT administrators and data management experts to identify and validate survey questions; a quantitative web-based survey of EDUCAUSE member institutions that received 309 responses, 78% of which were from the institution CIO or equivalent; qualitative interviews with 23 higher education IT leaders and staff; and two case studies.

Citation for this work: Yanosky, Ronald. Institutional Data Management in Higher Education—Key Findings (Key Findings 8, 2009). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

E08 Podcast: An Interview with Patrick Dreher - Cyberinfrastructure as a Fundemental Shift in Research and Teaching

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:02:33 +0000

This sixteen minute podcast features an interview with Patrick Dreher, Director of Advanced Computing Infrastructure and Systems at the Renaissance Computing Institute and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. Along with his presentation at EDUCAUSE 2008, "Making Campus Cyberinfrastructure Work for Your Campus," this conversation is part of Dreher's effort to help campus leaders understand how cyberinfrastucture represents a fundamental shift both at the research level and at the teaching level.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Edward Fox on Digital Scholarship

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:13:26 +0000

This twenty-eight minute podcast features an interview with Edward Fox, Professor for the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Digital Library Research Laboratory at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Fall Task Force Meeting, where Fox participated in the panel discussion, "Capturing Crisis: A Digital Library to Study Tragedy and Recovery from Around the World."

CNI Podcast: The Science Commons Project - An Interview with John Wilbanks

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:11:01 +0000

This thirty minute podcast features an interview with John Wilbanks, Vice-President of the Science Commons Project. It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Fall Task Force Meeting.

CNI Podcast: Archon - The Simple Archival Information System - An Interview with Chris Prom

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:46:19 +0000

This ten minute podcast features an interview with Chris Prom, Assistant University Archivist and Associate Professor of Library Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was recorded at the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2008 Task Force Meeting. Prom is part of team that developed the Archon software, which was awarded the Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration.

Archon is an open source application for archivists and manuscript curators. It automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects in a user-friendly website. There is no need to encode a finding aid, input a catalog record, or program a stylesheet. Archon's scripts will automatically make everything in the system searchable and browsable on your repository's website.

E08 Podcast: Preparing Your Campus for Data-Intensive Researchers

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:12:46 +0000

This forty-three minute podcast features a session recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference. The presentation, "Preparing Your Campus for Data-Intensive Researchers," is by Larry Smarr, Harry E. Gruber Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Streaming video for this session is also available.

Ask Good Questions by Starting with Key Decisions

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:10:47 +0000

The most effective data-collection efforts build on a clear understanding of the decisions the data should inform.

EDUCAUSE Now - Show #4 – Cybersecurity, Cyberinfrastucture, Fear 2.0

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:39:26 +0000

EDUCAUSE Now is a monthly podcast, focusing on the intelligent use of information technology in higher education. Each episode features a variety of stories, interviews, and views that relate to IT in higher education. Let us know what you would like to hear at podcast@educause.edu.

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This episode of EDUCAUSE Now features:

Institutional Research and IT: Bringing Data, Information, and Insights to the Accreditation Process

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:24:52 +0000

This ECAR research bulletin describes the results of recent organizational changes and work at Colorado College that are aimed at improving collaboration between IT, institutional research, and other campus offices with the goal of enhancing the data, information, and insights that influence policy and planning activities in general and the upcoming reaccreditation visit.

The Place of Information Technology in Planning for Innovation

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:15:44 +0000

The author discusses the dichotomy between pursuing innovative research and the funding and administration of it.

Podcast: Higher Education and Patent Reform: Pulled in Two Directions

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:19:12 +0000

This hour and fifteen-minute long podcast features a panel discussion entitled, "Higher Education and Patent Reform: Pulled in Two Directions". Particpants include: