Cultivating A Data Culture In Higher Education

Higher education institutions have experienced a sharp increase in demand for accountability. To meet the growing demand by legislators, accreditors, consumers, taxpayers, and parents for evidence of successful outcomes, this important book provides higher education leaders and practitioners with actionable strategies for developing a comprehensive data culture throughout the entire institution. Exploring key considerations necessary for the development of an effective data culture in colleges and universities, this volume brings together diverse voices and perspectives, including institutional researchers, senior academic leaders, and faculty. Each chapter focuses on a critical element of managing or influencing a data culture, approaches for breaking through common challenges, and concludes with practical, research-based implementation strategies. Collectively, these strategies form a comprehensive list of recommendations for developing a data culture and becoming a change agent within your higher education institution.

Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz offer a research-based model and actionable approach for using data strategically at community colleges to increase completion rates as well as other metrics linked to student success. They draw from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to show how leaders and administrators can build good habits for engaging with data constructively. At the core of their approach is a strategic effort to help administrators and faculty identify leading indicators that they can affect and monitor before student failure occurs. The book also helps educators make better use of common sources of data, clarify problems to be solved, match research-based interventions to problems, and evaluate results. The authors incorporate strategies for college personnel to engage with data more effectively by integrating student stories into presentations and embedding these discussions into existing meetings and routines. Three case studies from Long Beach City College, Southwestern College, and Odessa College further illustrate how this approach was implemented as part of comprehensive reform efforts. Based on two decades of experience working with colleges across the country, Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges promises to be a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about information use in education to improve student outcomes.

What does a culture of evidence really look like in higher education? The use of big data and the rapid acceleration of storage and analytics tools have led to a revolution of data use in higher education. Institutions have moved from relying largely on historical trends and descriptive data to the more widespread adoption of predictive and prescriptive analytics. Despite this rapid evolution of data technology and analytics tools, universities and colleges still face a number of obstacles in their data use. In How Colleges Use Data, Jonathan S. Gagliardi presents college and university leaders with an important resource to help cultivate, implement, and sustain a culture of evidence through the ethical and responsible use and adoption of data and analytics. Gagliardi provides a broad context for data use among colleges, including key concepts and use cases related to data and analytics. He also addresses the different dimensions of data use and highlights the promise and perils of the widespread adoption of data and analytics, in addition to important elements of implementing and scaling a culture of evidence. Demystifying data and analytics, the book helps faculty and administrators understand important topics, including: • How to define institutional aspirations using data • Equity and student success • Strategic finance and resource optimization • Academic quality and integrity • Data governance and utility • Implicit and explicit bias in data • Implementation and planning • How data will be used in the future How Colleges Use Data helps college and university leaders understand what a culture of evidence in higher education truly looks like.

Situating strategic planning and budgeting within the organization and administration of higher education institutions, this text provides effective and proven strategies for today’s change-oriented leaders. Bringing together distinguished administrators from two-year, four-year, public, and private colleges and universities, this volume provides both practical and effective guidance on the intricacies of the institutional structure, its functional activities, and contingency planning. Organization and Administration in Higher Education orients future administrators to the major areas of an academic institution and will assist higher education administrators in leading their institutions to excellence. New in the third edition is an expanded discussion of diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as updated coverage across various institutional settings including community colleges. Additionally, the authors provide guidance on managing crises and institutional disruptions such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Powers and Schloss offer refreshed end-of-chapter discussion prompts and online instructor materials, including PowerPoints to support multimodal learning and new methods of teaching found here: https://instituteforeffectiveness.org/organization-and-administration-of-higher-education

This valuable resource helps institutional leaders understand and implement a data strategy at their college or university that maximizes benefits to all creators and users of data. Exploring key considerations necessary for coordination of fragmented resources and the development of an effective, cohesive data strategy, this book brings together professionals from different higher education experiences and perspectives, including academic, administration, institutional research, information technology, and student affairs. Focusing on critical elements of data strategy and governance, each chapter in Data Strategy in Colleges and Universities helps higher education leaders address a frustrating problem with much-needed solutions for fostering a collaborative, data-driven strategy.

Co-published with and In this era of “Big Data,” institutions of higher education are challenged to make the most of the information they have to improve student learning outcomes, close equity gaps, keep costs down, and address the economic needs of the communities they serve at the local, regional, and national levels. This book helps readers understand and respond to this “analytics revolution,” examining the evolving dynamics of the institutional research (IR) function, and the many audiences that institutional researchers need to serve.Internally, there is a growing need among senior leaders, administrators, faculty, advisors, and staff for decision analytics that help craft better resource strategies and bring greater efficiencies and return-on-investment for students and families. Externally, state legislators, the federal government, and philanthropies demand more forecasting and more evidence than ever before. These demands require new and creative responses, as they are added to previous demands, rather than replacing them, nor do they come with additional resources to produce the analysis to make data into actionable improvements. Thus the IR function must become that of teacher, ensuring that data and analyses are accurate, timely, accessible, and compelling, whether produced by an IR office or some other source. Despite formidable challenges, IR functions have begun to leverage big data and unlock the power of predictive tools and techniques, contributing to improved student outcomes.

As indicated by the diversity of the authors' physical locations, COVID and emergency-remote teaching affected Higher-Education-Institutions at a nearly global scale. Authors in this issue come from European countries (Switzerland, Germany), North America (the USA) as well as the southern hemisphere (South Africa). Given the breadth of COVID-related (change) experiences, the insights presented in this issue can be relevant to many HEIs across the globe, notwithstanding their cultural and institutional specificities. In addition, and of high relevance to us, the articles collected here focus both on different positions or roles (students, faculty, management) as well as on different levels of teaching and learning in higher education. While most contributions focus on the student experience during COVID, others investigate faculty/instructors' perspectives including faculty development. Yet another group takes a more systemic, institutional point of view. It could be argued that higher-education research takes up a multi-level perspective when exploring change and the new normal.

American postsecondary institutions are faced with a growing financial crisis that threatens the quality, availability, and economics of the higher education system. Within this climate of economic uncertainty and decline, higher education is under pressure to restructure and reform its processes and contributions to society and to provide evidence of return on investment while using as few institutional resources as possible. In an effort to address these challenges, college and university administrators attempt to guide their institutions by becoming more focused on data-based decision making. This book provides an overview of Rapid Insight(R)'s Veera and how it can be used to address many difficulties confronting postsecondary institutions attempting to engage in meaningful data-based decision making. It is not intended to be an in-depth reference manual for the product, but, rather, to motivate novices to use Veera and to expose experienced users to real-world examples and tips.