
This special report on The Digital Campus looks at the promise — and the limits — of big data. Colleges want to use it to better track students and help them succeed, to find out what works in the classroom, and more. Here you’ll read about some of the efforts underway to accomplish those goals, but also caveats from several analysts, who warn that all that data is meaningless if colleges aren’t asking the right questions and identifying the most pressing problems — tasks that require human intervention. Copies of the report are available for purchase here.
Our coverage also examines the urgent threat to data security posed by hackers, the growing collaboration between colleges and private boot camps that offer technical skills, and the latest developments in the open-educational-resources movement.
Chronicle subscribers and site-license holders can read the full Digital Campus Report through the links below.
Subscribe today. Copies of the report are available for purchase here.
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News
Keeping Up With the Growing Threat to Data Security
College networks are under constant attack by hackers whose tools are increasingly sophisticated. -
News
Big Data for Student Success Still Limited to Early Adopters
With a few exceptions, high-tech efforts to track students with learning analytics are still just getting off the ground. -
News
Growing Pains Begin to Emerge in Open-Textbook Movement
Freely licensed textbooks mean big savings for students, but the extra work of assembling the course materials makes some faculty members wonder what’s in it for them. -
News
Where Every Student Is a Potential Data Point
At Western Governors University, an online-only institution that enrolls 80,000, the possibilities for institutional researchers are just about endless. -
Opinion
Big Hopes, Scant Evidence
Acquiring an expensive tool does not guarantee demonstrable and sustainable improvement. -
News
Big Data Alone Won’t Help Students
The information that comes out of big-data systems must be usable, useful, and actionable by educators who know how to make sense of it. -
News
Coding Boot Camps Come Into the Fold With Campus Partnerships
The career-focused programs were initially pitched as the antithesis of traditional colleges. But now several boot camps are discovering the value of a more direct connection to universities, and vice versa. -
News
The Cost That Holds Back Ed-Tech Innovation
Giving instructors adequate time and support for course redesign isn’t how most universities seem to spend their money. -
News
How Open E-Credentials Will Transform Higher Education
Colleges ignoring electronic credentialing now are like bookstores ignoring Amazon in 1997. You know what happened next. -
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