Top 10 ed-tech stories of 2013, No. 3: Big Data


“Flipped” and adaptive learning programs gained traction on campus. A high-profile internet hoax involving a college athlete propelled the term “catfishing” into the public consciousness. MOOCs hit some key stumbling blocks, while the notion of a college degree became more fluid.

techThese were some of the key ed-tech developments affecting colleges and universities in the past year—and we’ve got a full recap for you right here.

In this special all-digital publication, the editors of eCampus News highlight what we think are the 10 most significant higher-education technology stories of 2013.

To learn how these stories have made an impact on colleges and universities this year—and how they’ll continue to shape higher education in 2014 and beyond—read on.

3. ‘Big Data’ is changing the way colleges operate.

Purdue University students have developed a software program that uses Big Data to help police target where campus crime could happen.

A private Australian university is using data analytics to better understand the massive amounts of student feedback collected by faculty members every semester.

And the Lone Star College System is using Big Data to understand where it is most at risk of losing students, helping administrators evaluate how its policies are supporting or hindering student success.

These are just a few of the uses of “Big Data,” or the collection and analysis of large data sets to improve operations, that have emerged on college campuses this year. And, just as the uses of Big Data have evolved, the tools available to help campus officials make sense of all this information have evolved as well.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s new George W. Donaghey Foundation Emerging Analytics Center is combining Big Data and 3D virtual reality in a $5 million project that it hopes can help researchers visualize massive amounts of data and attract more business to the state.

Researchers in the University of California system are hoping they can help with new software called AsterixDB, a “next-generation platform” that can filter, store, and manage complex information.

And Rice University researchers are creating a customized, optical network to funnel the deluge of Big Data into the university’s supercomputers.

Big Data might be transformational, but expecting this transformation to be immediate is unfair to campus technologists charged with compiling the mass amounts of information, said panelists at the 2013 EDUCAUSE conference in Anaheim.

“There’s no single algorithm that is going to predict everybody or a set of variables that is going to be able to predict everything,” said Sherry Woosley, associate director of institutional effectiveness at Ball State University. “It’s complicated work. It’s messy, which is not what they taught me in stats class.”

The man who headed up the tech side of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign took issue with higher education’s emphasis on Big Data this year, and it’s not the first time he’s dismissed widespread data analytics as a passing fancy.

Harper Reed, who recently launched a mobile technology startup in Chicago after serving as chief technology officer for Obama’s 2012 campaign, said Oct. 29 at the State University of New York’s (SUNY) “Building a Smarter University” conference that universities’ focus on collecting and analyzing reams of data is “bulls***.”

Reed, according to a media report, denounced the term “Big Data” as a marketing tool meant to drive college and university IT officials toward expensive servers, and other technologies meant to store and analyze data.

See also:

New center allows researchers to ‘stand inside’ Big Data

UC Irvine researchers create Big Data management tool 

Rice University creates BOLD system to handle Big Data

Big Data used to beef up campus security

Is Big Data too ‘messy’ for higher education?

Obama campaign tech chief denounces ‘Big Data’

Improving student feedback with Big Data

Events on campus yield big data with new mobile app

IBM tool tests ‘Big Data’ students’ preparedness

Does Big Data have a place in community colleges?

 

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eCampus News Staff

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