Advanced Analytics in Education: Transforming the Higher Ed Landscape
Advanced Analytics in Education: Transforming the Higher Ed Landscape
With the inclusion of cutting-edge technology solutions in higher ed and the way education space is embracing the tech changes by each passing day, higher ed leaders often vouch for REVOLUTION – The Higher Ed revolution! They believe that higher ed institutions can leverage technology and complementing methodologies like advanced analytics and big data to ensure the exhibition of progressive curve in their learning and student engagement graphs.
On one hand, where most of the institutions are oblivious to the impact advanced analytics have on overall progress of the institution; trusting student engagement to be playing the majority; the other fold stating a handful of institutions making the most of the advanced analytics surely comes across as a wake-up alarm for others.
Advanced analytics help institutions to be cognizant of the potential pitfalls that they may face in the future as well as highlight institution’s abilities and practical steps that can be strategized to overcome those pitfalls.
Au Fait with the Challenges
Higher Ed leaders cannot just pay lip service to the benefits of analytics without understanding and being cognizant of all the obstacles and shortcomings of the respective institution. Their primary objective should be to focus on churning out statistics to let others take advantage of them and know the overall performance of the institution. Focusing on external compliance should fall afterwards as generating analytics per daily scenarios needs to be data-driven to support the desired strategies for good; which cannot be limited by time constraints.
Lack of good data hygiene is another problem many institutions face and it often arises due to the provision of little to no incentive for sharing data. This further leads to disagreement in set of numbers pulled out separately by different authorities for different student segments, say student retention or enrollment rates. Howbeit, such hurdles can be eliminated with the help of a software vendor which can deploy an uniform profitable analytic program at place.
Similarly, there can be other challenges like lack of appropriate talent or isolation of analytics for different student segments, among others that institutions must be aware of to make the most of advanced analytics.
Realizing the Results
Institutions can leverage advanced analytics in different ways. For example, if an institution wants to know about the best fit of the applicants, if admitted as students, advanced analytics can help the institution to know the data related to applicant’s background, campus visits, email responses and the frequency of opening the relevant emails, among others. Email responses help institutions to predict the needs and expectations of a student when it comes down to selecting a college or university. Additionally, the institutions can also know about the students enrolling in the competitor colleges/universities as well as the sources from where the students have been coming in to visit the campus. Altogether, it is fair to say that institutions can take advantage of such insights to be future-ready.
Notwithstanding, there is much more to the bliss of analytics. To boot, institutions can be mindful of all the problems in the system. For instance, an institution might be facing a rapid decline in enrollment numbers, despite spending a lot on marketing and branding, just because of the inept placement of institution’s call center.
The Bottom Line Is
The above-mentioned benefits hardly scratched the surface of what advanced analytics can do to transform the way higher ed institutions run today. There is way more than what we just summarized in these few words; for instance, personalizing student experiences, predicting the reasons behind student drop out rates, understanding the potential of outlined strategies, determining competency levels, and others are some of the benefits institutions can leverage with advanced analytics. However, this all comes down to the higher ed leaders and how well they prioritize data and analytics in the system. Encouraging the culture of taking data-driven decisions and shifting focus towards measurable outcomes can indubitably help institutions to see positive outcomes in the long run. In the process, the institutions are creating sustainable options for themselves while supporting student success alongside.
