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Educause Top 10 2013: #10 Using analytics to support critical institutional outcomes
As always, Casey's data provide a valuable glimpse into the state of technology in higher education. Thank you Casey!
One of the interesting things about Casey's data is that CIO"s tended to be more generous in viewing the effectiveness of investments elsewhere in IT (either the same rating or a higher rating than other executives) than in analytics.
Jack picked up on an interesting point regarding the differing perspectives on analytics of CIOs and executive leadership. More detailed research on why CIOs might be less convinced about the effectiveness of analytics would be welcome. And I hope someone will take up that challenge.
In the meantime, just a speculation: CIOs who are intimately aware of the underlying mechanics of mining large datasets may recognize that while some areas of analysis are relatively mature --- financial modeling comes to mind --- others, such as student success (performance, continuity, retention, etc.) are relatively early in their evolution. Being cautious about the efficacy of such analyses is merely prudent. Time alone will determine how well we are able to identify the relevant variables, perform reliable data collection, develop sound predictive (and explanatory) analytic routines, and base institutional decision-making about, eg., student success on such analytics.
The nice thing about a "work in progress" of this sort is that we don't have to take sides. As good scientists we can pursue (or monitor) progress in analytics and simply let the data speak for itself.
Thanks again to Theresa, Casey, Jack and others for shining light on this topic.
Marty
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Martin Ringle, Chief Information Officer
Reed College, Portland, OR 97202
503-777-7254 email: cio@reed.edu
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On Jun 18, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Jack Suess wrote:
One of the interesting things about Casey's data is that CIO"s tended to be more generous in viewing the effectiveness of investments elsewhere in IT (either the same rating or a higher rating than other executives) than in analytics.
To me, that implies that either 1) CIO's have expectations that aren't being met or 2) that most campuses are not doing enough in this space to generate high value. Is is interesting that CIO's come in so much lower than Presidents/Provosts on Analytics. This might mean that even some minor success is viewed very well by presidents/provosts.
The EDUCAUSE Analytics maturity model that Susan mentioned is a good one because value tends to increase as you move along the maturity model (Hopefully). I think it is a good idea to have your different stakeholders (CIO, IR, other leaders) take this independently and then meet as a group and talk about your scores. This process allows you to find where some of the gaps are and you can then look for ways of closing them. Why someone rated something high or low and someone had the opposite rating.
For UMBC, we have done a lot and there are some EDUCAUSE materials we have done. One of the neat projects we did last year and we are continuing this year is the concept of a data gallery. We are starting our campus retreat (about 200 campus leaders -- 100 of which are faculty) with the opening of a data gallery where everyone can come in and explore some of the analytical studies and can ask questions that people use the data to explore (mostly these are Did you look at X? or What about Y?). This is a great way of getting data in front of people and letting them get acclimated to looking at data.
thanks
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