As institutions of higher education increasingly look to data as evidence to support planning, allocate resources, and inform teaching and pedagogy, ethical considerations regarding learning analytics have evolved from being on the margins to more central in the conversations surrounding institutional uses of student data. After outlining this…

When attempting to use data to inform practice and policy, the availability, accuracy and relevance of that data are paramount. This article maps the range of users interested in data relating to the UK widening participation (WP) agenda. It explores some challenges associated with identifying, defining, obtaining and using data to inform…

The increasing availability of digital data in higher education provides an extraordinary resource for researchers to undertake educational research, targeted at understanding challenges facing the sector. Big data can stimulate new ways to transform processes relating to learning and teaching, and helps identify useful data, sources of evidence…

As a growing entity within higher education organizational structures, enrollment managers (EMs) are primarily tasked with projecting, recruiting, and retaining the student population of their campuses. Enrollment managers are expected by institutional presidents as well as through industry standards to make data-driven planning decisions to reach…

Wikis continue to be used within technology environments of K-12 and higher education because they offer a collaborative environment for students to produce and receive content in concert with each other or on an individual basis (Kirkham, 2014). These online spaces are typically used as a course management system where students can both receive…

The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos…

Open Data is the name given to datasets which have been generated by international organisations, governments, NGOs and academic researchers, and made freely available online and openly-licensed. These datasets can be used by educators as Open Educational Resources (OER) to support different teaching and learning activities, allowing students to…

The article addresses the question of how the assessment process with large-scale data derived from online learning environments will be different from the assessment process without it. Following an explanation of big data and how it is different from previously available learner data, we describe three notable features that characterize…

The 2013-18 West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission master plan, "Leading the Way: Access. Success. Impact" was developed to provide a programmatic framework and goals to enable the state's system of public four-year institutions to meet the educational needs of West Virginians. A state economy in flux with declining revenues…

In the case of higher education, the hills are more like mountains of data that "we're accumulating at a ferocious rate," according to Gerry McCartney, CIO of Purdue University (Indiana). "Every higher education institution has this data, but it just sits there like gold in the ground," complains McCartney. Big Data and the new tools people are…

This is the second paper in the West Virginia State Higher Education Policy Commission's series concerning the major areas of the Commission's new master plan and compact process. Each paper elaborates on a particular theme sharing additional best practices and insights. It is the intention of the Commission that these additional resources assist…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

The purpose of this study is to examine the differences between groups of psychology students and groups of psychology professionals based on the personality trait of Extraversion, and its facets, as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992). Previous applications of the NEO PI-R have focused on…

As external forces demand change in the delivery of postsecondary education and institutions seek to take advantage of new opportunities, the potential for achieving higher levels of student and institutional success is vast. New technologies, communication tools, data use, and organizational constructs present key factors in improving the…

A major effort of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems over the past few years has been the development of information Exchange Procedures (IEP) for a broad spectrum of colleges and universities. The motivation for this effort is the strong belief that the exchange and comparative analysis of data will lead to better…