EDUCAUSE | Data Warehouse

Incorporating Data-Driven Decision-Making into Application Design

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:02:10 +0000

Using the case of an electronic research administration system implementation, we will share some tips and tricks for incorporating considerations for data-driven decision making into application design. Rather than making BI and data warehousing an afterthought once a new system is implemented, project teams can integrate data warehouse design and requirements into the main project design. Spending time up front thinking through the ways in which managers anticipate using data from the new system to guide their business can pay off in the end.

IT Infrastructure to Support Analytics: Laying the Groundwork for Institutional Analytics

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:08:37 +0000

Analytics has become a hot topic in the educational community, and several key questions must be addressed concerning the infrastructure of an analytics program. These issues include the systems and tools used for analytics, data sources and models, and governance structures. This research bulletin broadly addresses these functions and related activities of the IT department that are important to providing analytics infrastructure.

Citation for this Work: Grochow, Jerrold. “IT Infrastructure to Support Analytics: Laying the Groundwork for Institutional Analytics” (Research Bulletin). Louisville, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, October 23, 2012, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

EDUCAUSE Analytics Sprint, Day 3 Recap: Analytics for Enterprise Efficiency and Effectiveness

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:42:50 +0000

Thursday, the third and final day of the EDUCAUSE Analytics Sprint. Today we heard about enterprise-level activities to support analytics at the University of Washington (UW) and at Arizona State University (ASU). By now, everyone knows that analytics programs depend on good data, and we all know that at most institutions, ensuring appropriate access to reliable data is not trivial. As was noted today, colleges and universities are “loose confederations of guilds” in which people tend to fiercely guard their data.

Podcast: John Campbell and George Siemens on Using Analytics

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:31:17 +0000

In this podcast, Executive Director of Administrative Information Services at Princeton University, Colin Currie, talks analytics with George Siemens and John Campbell. Siemens is associate director for the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University and John Campbell is associate vice president of academic technologies for Purdue University.

Music: "New Pop Wave" by sebastian6

EDUCAUSE Podcast Sponsor

On the Horizon: The Power and Potential of Analytics

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 22:10:04 +0000

“We are at the dawn of an era in which educators have the potential to harness technology to produce a dramatic change in student achievement. Although visionaries have been promising for years that technology would transform primary and secondary education – and despite the billions of dollars spent on networking schools and equipping them with computers and other devices – the actual impact on student outcomes to date has been disappointing. Yet when technology is strategically introduced into every step of the educational value chain, it does, in fact have the potential to enhance every aspect of instruction and learning.” From Unleashing the Potential of Technology in Education. In order to dramatically improve student outcomes, technology must be fully aligned with educational objectives, standards, curricula, assessments, interventions and professional development.

Analytics for Enterprise Efficiency and Effectiveness

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 20:13:21 +0000

Analytics: A 3 Day Sprint - July 26th, 2012

How is analytics used in the enterprise area? What kinds of data governance, policies and infrastructure need to be in place to ensure effective institutional use of analytics?

Podcast: Ganesan Ravishanker on the Democracy and Pitfalls of Data Analytics

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:02:35 +0000

Ganesan Ravishanker is Chief Information Officer at Wellesley College. In this conversation he shares his cautious insights into the challenges and benefits of analytics.

Building a Performance Analytics Environment

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 18:41:22 +0000

Key Takeaways

An initiative aimed at institutional growth further fuelled Philadelphia University’s push toward more data-driven processes and led to the development of a campus-wide performance dashboard.
Mining data that wasn’t in electronic form was one challenge, but the larger issues related to data access and reliability, as well as time-intensive data-gathering efforts.
The dashboard effort highlighted the importance of establishing user groups, gaining support within academic departments, and focusing on tangible benefits, such as increased resource utilization.
Legacy practices and cultural barriers to change can have a significant impact on implementation and adoption.

Enabling the Data-Driven University

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:33:17 +0000

Key Takeaways

The business intelligence team at Arizona State University created a dashboard to track usage of the various existing dashboards and tools — putting analytics on top of analytics.
The usage dashboard serves as a performance metric for the BI team: adoption rate is a measure of the team’s success.
As a tool for research, ASU’s dashboards deliver not only a single version of <<research activity>> but also a visual spark line of 36 months to help identify trends in awards, compared with proposals and expenditures.

Understanding and Managing the Risks of Analytics in Higher Education: A Guide

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 14:43:27 +0000

This guide provides an introduction to the major risk categories faced by a higher education institution considering investments in time, energy, and money in analytics work. Under the right circumstances, decision making can be enhanced by the tools and techniques of analytics; large data sets, analytics engines, and new data visualization techniques have considerable potential to enhance both student learning and institutional business intelligence. However, careful consideration must be given to the risks of such investments for those in institutional leadership roles as well as the risks associated with data and information governance, compliance, and quality.

Using Analytics for Institutional Transformation

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:24:39 +0000

Key Takeaways

To achieve its strategic goals, UMBC realized it needed to become a more data-driven institution by deploying more sophisticated tools and procedures to help staff find and analyze data in a timely way.
Specifically, the university needed accurate and easily created queries to support operational reporting and strategic analysis, which a data warehouse made possible.
Successful implementation of the data warehouse required resolving campus-wide issues with buy-in, IT partnering with IR, governance, and cost.

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.

Data Architect

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:08:44 +0000

The University of Akron is accepting applications for the position of Data Architect in Application Systems Services department.

Duties: Design, construct, document, tests, and maintain data marts and meta data repositories for the University's central data warehouse. Use database, data warehouse, and web-based reporting tools to support campus access to the data warehouse. Provide technical and/or project guidance to ETL Programming staff including general scheduling, assigning tasks, and monitoring work activities.

Learning Analytics: Institutional & Research Perspectives

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:52:57 +0000

Join us for this webinar on three institutional learning analytics projects with Mike Sharkey, Chris Brooks, and Simon Buckingham Shum.

University of Phoenix

With approximately 400,000 students, the University of Phoenix is one of the largest institutions in the United States. A by-product of this large enrollment is a sizeable amount of data. The challenge to the University of Phoenix is to transform those data into useful information, and then get the information into the hands of those who can take appropriate action. Over the last year, one such implementation has been the development of a statistical model to predict whether or not a student will pass a course. The goal is to get this information to academic counselors who may be able to help students succeed before it’s too late. This webinar will go into detail about the behind-the-scenes views of the modeling project.

Advanced Research in Intelligent Educational Systems laboratory (ARIES), Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan

The amount of online and connected learning being done gives us an unprecedented ability to understand the impact of learner behaviors on themselves, their learning, and their peers. The large-scale data collection that is afforded by the broad use of learning technologies offers us the ability to understand education at a scale we’ve never been able to before. This talk will dive into some of the issues around collecting, analyzing, and understanding e-learning activity data. It will focus on pragmatic issues of concern, balancing interesting research questions with real-world collection and interpretation concerns based on experience in integrating analytics-aware features in online learning environments.

UK Open University's Knowledge Media Institute/LAK12

Simon will outline the research challenge of developing process-centric learning analytics to help build the transferable capacities needed for real world learning in a complex world, e.g. C21 dispositions for learning-to-learn and critical discourse. Simon is Program Co-Chair of 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics, delivered a recent Ascilite2011 Keynote on learning analytics, and serves on the Executive Committee of the newly founded Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAResearch.org). Simon's research on Learning Analytics: http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/tag/learning-analytics.

Data to Dashboards: Creating and Using Analytics

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:56:27 +0000

Data-informed decision making is deeply permeated in the culture at Montgomery County Community College. This session will identify the people, processes, and tools that need to be in place for a successful deployment of analytics; provide an appreciation of how data can inform decision making; and describe the complexities of managing data input.

From Data Warehouse to Business Intelligence: Paradigm Shift or Simply a New Set of Tools?

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:45:19 +0000

Today's analytical environment keeps getting more and more complex, with data being stored everywhere. Data-driven organizations rely heavily on this data for decision making. This interactive session will explore creating an underlying strategy and roadmap to extend data warehouses and build in business intelligence at the heart of information delivery.

Penetrating the Fog: Analytics in Learning and Education

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:57:08 +0000

Learning analytics can penetrate the fog of uncertainty around how to allocate resources, develop competitive advantages, and improve the quality and value of the learning experience.

Interview Podcast: Julie Latham on Data Warehouse Deployment on a Small Campus

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:13:31 +0000

In this interview, Julie Latham, Enterprise Applications and Data Warehouse Administrator for Carleton College, takes us through data warehouse deployment from conception to implementation on a small college campus.

EDUCAUSE 2009 Conference Podcast Sponsors

Insight Initiatives

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:51:13 +0000

"Insight initiatives are known by other names in other sectors: business intelligence, in the corporate world; evidence-based medicine, in healthcare. These efforts, which combine explorations of information from the past (hindsight) with looks to the future (foresight), come together in a moment of insight to power decisions that make a positive difference. These initiatives leverage technology, planning, research, strategy, and a host of other key elements to truly realize the treasure of student and institutional data at our fingertips."

Enterprise Reporting and Business Intelligence: A Practical Solution Using Data Warehousing Firepower and Cognos 8 Refinement

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:15:36 +0000

Dickinson's enterprise resource planning environment and goals in implementing a reporting and business intelligence function will be described, as well as information flow from transactional databases to a data warehouse and to Cognos 8 for user consumption.

An Interview with Doug Cothern

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:15:28 +0000

In this 7 minute recording, we'll hear from Doug Cothern, Director of Database Administration Services at MTSU. Listen in as he shares some thoughts on making a switch from a corporate to academic cultures, ERP systems implementation and data warehousing.

Data Warehousing: A Proven Solution to Sustaining a Vibrant Business

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:56:42 +0000

As important as data are to an organization, the business will fail if its reporting is not sustainable. Learn how University of Missouri-Rolla developed its data warehouse as the melding unit and the flexing entity for corporate data, allowing the business to remain vibrant through innumerable changes in systems and business processes.

First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently; The Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse - Book Reviews

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:53:26 +0000

First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, reviewed by Joel A. Cohen, is a collection of interviews with managers on how to create strong worker productivity and retention. The second review, on The Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse, describes the two main components of this book, which are the lessons on gathering data from a clickstream and how to place a datawarehouse in a Web environment.

Knowledge, Vetting, and Discovery

Thu, 25 May 2006 18:42:50 +0000

Presentation at the May 2006 ECAR Academy in Dedham, Massachusetts. "NERCOMP Presents: ECAR Academy" was developed jointly by NERCOMP and ECAR to develop the next generation of current and emerging leaders and further the IT profession by promoting and fostering a culture of evidence. Participants examined the most pressing issues facing higher education/IT today from a data-driven point of view; participated in a rigorous and highly interactive curriculum led by ECAR investigators (fellows); learned how to interpret and use information strategically to inform leadership decisions and processes; and joined an ongoing, supportive peer network.

E2005 Podcast: Academic Analytics: The Uses of Information to Manage the Academy

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:35:54 +0000

This 49 minute recording provides coverage of the 2005 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference Session entitled Academic Analytics: The Uses of Information to Manage the Academy.