Big Data in Education Industry

Education industry is flooding with huge amounts of data related to students, faculty, courses, results, and what not. Now, we have realized that proper study and analysis of this data can provide insights which can be used to improve the operational effectiveness and working of educational institutes.

Following are some of the fields in the education industry that have been transformed by big data-motivated changes:

Customized and Dynamic Learning Programs - Customized programs and schemes to benefit individual students can be created using the data collected on the bases of each student’s learning history. This improves the overall student results.

Reframing Course Material - Reframing the course material according to the data that is collected on the basis of what a student learns and to what extent by real-time monitoring of the components of a course is beneficial for the students.

Grading Systems - New advancements in grading systems have been introduced as a result of a proper analysis of student data.

Career Prediction - Appropriate analysis and study of every student’s records will help understand each student’s progress, strengths, weaknesses, interests, and more. It would also help in determining which career would be the most suitable for the student in future.

The applications of big data have provided a solution to one of the biggest pitfalls in the education system, that is, the one-size-fits-all fashion of academic set-up, by contributing in e-learning solutions.

Example - The University of Alabama has more than 38,000 students and an ocean of data. In the past when there were no real solutions to analyze that much of data, some of them seemed useless. Now, administrators are able to use analytics and data visualizations for this data to draw out patterns of students revolutionizing the university’s operations, recruitment, and retention efforts.