What is Big Data in Education?
Big Data conundrum? Don’t worry you are not alone. But don’t think Big Data just as a fad. It is the next thing that’s going to revolutionize the education sector. Gartner defines Big Data as “high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation”. Putting it in the context of education sector with an example- Give students access to tablets, and monitor their social media or email data. This provides very specific real-time data but can also generate either too much data or overly-complex data. The too-muchness of data defines “Big Data” that cannot be analyzed using conventional techniques.
Current State of Big Data in Education Sector?
Big Data technology will keep on gaining significance, as more and more of our lives are recorded online like Student Information System for grades, LMS for learning and social interaction on Facebook. For Big Data to be really effective in education sector, the datasets need to be much bigger than most institutions can handle/collect on their own. This requires current systems implemented in the institutions to be cloud-powered, flexible and integration capabilities across platforms.
Challenges in implementing Big Data?
Implementing Big Data requires investment in storage capacity to collect vast amount of inbound data from various digital channels. The next challenge is integration of various tools and perform analysis on the data to provide insights to support business outcomes. Also, creating a single window pane to give simplified picture can be a herculean task. Another major challenge could be to ensure privacy and security issues.
Real value of Big Data-How it can be obtained?
Real value of Big Data is realized when institutions have necessary means and resources to mine the complex set of data and come up with insights that enable business outcomes. Big Data coupled with business analytics capabilities (big data analytics) can proved to be an important piece of the puzzle in solving some of the biggest problems in education sector. Examples can range from offering right courses and programs, key indicators to predict student behaviors, overall institutional performance, as well as testing pedagogical approaches to improve learning outcomes. Big Data can break the logjam created by archaic seat time requirements in education that can lead to efficient and effective delivery of instruction. More and more universities and colleges are already turning to Big Data to improve overall student results with a belief that smarter students who study faster will have a positive effect on organizations and society. Therefore, let’s not wait and embrace Big Data in education!
How Classe365 addresses the situation?
So the big question is whether your current Student information system provides big data capabilities? Can it be integrated to various digital channels to collect data and handle the vast of amount of data securely? Business intelligence and advanced analytics capabilities to predict future outcomes and helps in taking decision in present scenario?
If not, then answer lies in Student Information System offered by Classe365. Classe365’s SIS solution is hosted on cloud that gives customers required flexibility, scalability and integration capabilities across all the digital channels. To address business continuity and security issues, solution is fully automated with daily backups and robust security frameworks. Classe365’s SIS seamless integration with Microsoft Power BI and Domo enables to collect and store huge amount of data, generate insights with simple drag & drop and create a dashboard to view it on a single pane. It also enable to customize the view and provide better insight of your institution and student performances. Big data analysis and key indicators builds patterns to predict student behaviors and institution performance. This information can be rolled into overall institution improvements