Next Generation Analytics

Donald M. Norris and Paul Lefrere, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.

Next Generation Analytics

• The Future of Analytics

• Solutions for Higher Education

• Framing Action Analytics – The Analytics Diamond

• Policy-relevant Analytics

• Internationally-competitive Analytics

• Data Discovery, Mash-ups, Social Networks

• Upgrading Analytic Methods and Insights

The Future of AnalyticsToday Tomorrow

• High-cost business intelligence

• Power users do analytics for end users and decision makers

• Users must wait for analytics, static format and content

• Centralized control of all phases of analytics

• Power users sole source of analytics expertise

• Narrow skills of front-line staff

• Institutional data sets

• Power users do most analyses

• Value analytics for the masses

• Power users perform specialized analytics, end users deploy user friendly tools

• Immediate results, dynamic analysis, changing parameters

• Enterprise-wide infrastructure and data governance, decentralized analytics and mash-ups

• Analytics expertise dispersed throughout the organization

• Broader skills of front-line staff

• Broader data sets, K-20 and fused work and learning data sets

• Differentiation across institutions, shared services

Solutions for Higher Education

• Value analytics: quick wins, sustainable advantage

• Embrace social networking and analytics

• A solutions marketplace in transition: vendor acquisitions, consolidation, and merger; the Stack and the cloud

• Start with what you have: Build, buy, and mashup

• Analytics-for-every-person tools, application integrators, desktop tools

3. Framing Action Analytics

Policy-relevant Analytics

• Data from Everywhere

• Social networking

• Sense-making, Evidence-based decisions

• Citizen Empowerment

• Rising Expectations

• Observatories/Repositories (Track Success/Failure, Best Practice/Value)

Internationally-competitive Analytics

• Where to look, what to look for, Bologna (eg, recruiting international students who will succeed)

• Developing dashboards for each applicant– On track for each task facing them?– Do they have access to all the resources they

will need to complete what they start?

• Examples from Europe

Data Discovery, Mash-ups, Social Networks

• Data Discovery, eg look for patterns that reveal students/faculty who discover “Threshold Concepts” – powerful insights into troublesome subject areas, that can transform student understanding, see eg http://www.prodait.org/learning/threshold.php

• Analytics Mash-ups, to cut across silos, save time

• Smarter ways to Map and Sustain Social Networks, eg, to smooth the path for under-represented groups of students (next-generation forms of help in the recruitment and retention of those students)

In Conclusion: What Next?

• Upgrade Analytic Methods to yield Affordable and Flexible ways to meet emerging needs and to anticipate new needs

• Program for Discovery Analytics and related Mash-ups?

• Instrumenting Education? Integrate Analytics in Social Networks as they evolve into Shared-Knowledge Networks?