Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

IBM collaborates with 1,000 institutions to help close Big Data skills gap

IBM announced on Wednesday that it has added nine new institutions to its academic partnerships that focus on Big Data.

In two years, there will be 4.4. million jobs dealing with Big Data, which is the phrase used to describe the 2.5 quintillion bytes of information created every day through consumer data, mobile devices and social media. Some estimate that the amount of Big Data will reach 40 zettabytes by 2025.

The demand for people with data analytics skills is expected to increase by 24 percent over the next eight years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which could mean more jobs than people who can actually do them.

IBM, the technology corporation behind the data-mining super computer and Jeopardy champ Watson, has taken new steps in its attempt to help create enough Big Data scientists to close that “skills gap” and deal with the oncoming onslaught of information. The company announced on Wednesday that it has has added nine new institutions to its academic partnerships that focus on Big Data.…Read More

When Big Data pays

Civitas Learning parses Big Data from more than 3 million student records.

Big Data can mean big business.

In February, the technology research company Wikibon released a report predicting that the Big Data market would value $18.1 billion by the end of this year. That’s a growth of 61 percent since 2012.

From corporations to health and government agencies, there are few sectors not exploring the capabilities of Big Data – education included.…Read More

UC Irvine researchers create Big Data management tool

Many universities have harnessed Big Data over the past year.

Managing Big Data can be a big headache.

The amount of information people can access online is constantly growing. In fact, with every day that passes another 2.5 quintillion bytes of online information is created. This data can be used to find patterns in student learning, help quickly diagnose patients and track consumer trends.

But it’s hard to make sense of all of this information without a way to store and analyze it. Researchers in the University of California system are hoping they can help with their new software called AsterixDB.…Read More