Overview of Analytics – Why Action Analytics for Higher Education?

Linda Baer, Minnesota State Colleges and UniversitiesDonald M. Norris, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.

Why Are We Here and Who Has Been Invited?

• Trustees and institutional leaders• Leading institutional practitioners• Political leaders and policy makers• Foundations and national associations• Community leaders

• Agencies and professionals focusing on K-20 and workforce

The National Symposium Program

• Why action analytics for higher education?

• Best practices in building analytics capacity

• Accountability and assessment panel – what information, reports, and dashboards are needed?

• Building analytics to support institutional and public policy

• Building the next generation educational technology tools to support action analytics

• Preparing for tomorrow’s discussion

• Setting a national agenda and next steps

Why Action Analytics for Higher Education?

• What Do We Mean By Action Analytics?

• Analytics and Performance Improvement Evolve in Higher Education

• How Action Analytics Differs from Common Academic Analytics

• What Are the Forces Driving Action Analytics?

• What is Needed to Build Organizational Capacity for Action Analytics

• What is the Action in Action Analytics?

• Need for a National Agenda

1. What Do We Mean By Action Analytics?

• Analytics that demand action

• A culture of performance measurement and improvement (Figure 1)

• Optimized data, information, and analytics resources

• Analytics for the masses

• Transparent, pervasive, continuous decision support

2. Analytics and Performance Improvement Evolve in Higher Education

• Evolution of information technology – The Stack and the Cloud (Figure 2)

• Reporting, query and analytics tools and practices (Figure 3)

• Measuring and improving performance and focusing on value

• Academic analytics morphs into action analytics

Elements of Action Analytics (Figure 4)

• Processes, solutions, behaviors

• Extend beyond ERP

• Enable alignment

• Build organizational capacity, change culture

• PK-20 perspective, linking learning to work

• Cross-institutional, inter-sectoral

3. How Action Analytics Differs from Common Academic Analytics

• Supports smart change – engagement, shared leadership, transformative change

• Differentiating characteristics

• Understanding the actions of analytics (Figure 5)

• Involves a broad range of stakeholders (Figure 6)

4. What Are the Forces Driving Action Analytics?

• Calls for transparency and accountability

• Close the education gap

• Improve student success, reduce total cost of learning

• Learner and family affordability crisis

• National and state-level PK-20

• Need to re-establish financial sustainability, lift out of recession

• Leverage President Obama’s Agenda to achieve these ends

5. What is Needed to Build Organizational Capacity for Action Analytics?

• Compelling reasons to use action analytics

• Clear return on investment

• Strong leadership and will

• Support from trustees

• Raising the “Analytics IQ” of leaders and building organizational capacity

• Promoting cross-institution comparison and cross-sector analysis

6. What is the Action in Action Analytics?

• Learner choice based on transparent, comparable analytics (Value-based); Learners seeking guidance on academic status and progress

• Public and policy makers view of higher education

• Institutional leadership, planning, and management (Figure 6)

• Strategic Enrollment Management, serving the underserved

• Business process reinvention, improving performance

• Program innovation, enterprise-wide scaling

• Bridging and pathways to PK-20

• Employment and Workforce Linkage

• Lifting Out of Recession

Linking Analytics to Lifting out of Recession (White Paper)

• Basic Premises

• From short-term actions to addressing longer-term challenges

• Efficiency/effectiveness, innovation and transformation, and new revenues

• Disruptive and dislodging events

• Mobilizing change agents for lifting out of recession

7. Need for a National Agenda

• What issues should a national agenda for analytics focus on?

• What are the pressure point for analytics?

• How does this fit with President Obama’s agenda? The agendas of national and state-level organizations and foundations?

• How do we make a difference in a timely fashion?

• How can analytics support serious institutional innovation? Establishing financial sustainability?

• What future research and demonstration projects are needed to advance the case for action analytics?

Contacts

• Linda Baer651.282.5515linda.baer@so.mnscu.edu

• Donald Norris703.450.5255dmn@strategicinitiatives.com

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