Historic data in analog (or print) format is a valuable resource that is utilized by scientists in many fields. This type of data may be found in various locations on university campuses including offices, labs, storage facilities, and archives. This study investigates whether biological data held in one institutional university archives could be…

There is no single agreed-upon definition of data literacy because expectations of what it means to be data literate varies across contexts. The lack of agreement on a definition of data literacy across contexts is therefore necessary. However, definitions are important. Definitions embody our understanding of concepts and are the foundation for…

Established in 2004, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (program) had as its goal the recruitment, training, and creation of cohorts of new PhDs working within the library or cultural heritage digital environment to help manage, sustain, and generate valuable information in support of research…

Research data management is essential for high-quality reproducible research, yet relatively little is known about how research data management is practiced by graduate students in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). Prior research suggests that faculty in CEE delegate research data management to graduate students, prompting this…

Each year, state legislators craft new policies that drive data use across their states, and as part of a comprehensive review of state education data legislation, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) keeps track. In 2022, state legislators introduced 131 bills in 35 states--42 of which became law in 17 states-- that would govern the use of data along…

When the COVID-19 pandemic drove schools online in March 2020, state education leaders were left without access to data needed to understand how best to support students. The pandemic revealed the strengths and limitations of state education data systems while inspiring new strategies for collecting, reporting and using data. In 2021, DataSmith…

In 2024, state legislators introduced hundreds of bills that would affect data collection, access, and use across early education, K-12, postsecondary, and the workforce. As in 2023, legislators continued to introduce and enact legislation governing cross-agency data systems. These policies are the most important step toward making statewide…

This report focuses on data governance at post-secondary institutions and related organizations. Data governance is defined as the formal execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data and data-related assets (Seiner, 2014). An overview of data governance at higher education institutions provides detail on elements of data…

The "Forum Guide to Data Governance" highlights how data governance programs benefit education agencies and provide timely and useful best practices, examples, and resources for agencies implementing or updating their data governance programs. This resource is intended to address the needs of federal, state, and local agencies related…

Data quality has become a pressing issue for many campuses in recent years, as colleges struggle to extract timely, accurate, and consistent information from ever-proliferating institutional data sources in order to meet strategic decision-making and accountability demands. In this mixed methods study, a survey and semi-structured interviews were…

The National College Access Network (NCAN) and Exponent Partners have teamed up on a two-part report series aimed at helping organizations to become more data-driven. NCAN members have increasingly incorporated research, data, and evaluation into their critical work of serving low-income, first-generation students on their way to postsecondary…

This publication highlights how state leaders tackle data interoperability with the emergence of data standards for student information, assessment, digital content, and other educational applications. While states are at various maturity levels for interoperability, each state shares goals for interoperability, the drivers for those goals,…

People providing services to schools, teachers, and students want to know whether these services are effective. With that knowledge, a project director can expand services that work well and adjust implementation of activities that are not working as expected. When finding that an innovative strategy benefits students, a project director might…

In the current digital world, data is becoming an increasingly valuable resource and the demand for sharing or releasing data has never been higher. Organizations need to make available versions of the data they collected for business or legal reasons and at the same time they are under strong obligation to protect sensitive information about…

This paper details the anticipated impact of synthetic "big" data on learning analytics (LA) infrastructures, with a particular focus on data governance, the acceleration of service development, and the benchmarking of predictive models. By reviewing two cases, one at the sector-wide level (the Jisc learning analytics architecture) and…