Blogs

It’s time to align your analytics efforts with your tech strategy

Introducing your new hub for insights on data strategy in higher education

• Email
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

When EAB first launched the IT Forum in 2014, the role of technology in higher education was the domain of Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers, and other technology professionals. Sure, some digital leaders held Cabinet-level positions, and larger IT organizations like Arizona State University were playing a central role in corralling institutions towards collaborative strategies with emerging EdTech vendors. But the majority of schools sought EAB’s help in making the case for technology investments, working across campus silos, and positioning IT as a key enabler of institutional strategy and mission.

Build your future-proof digital strategy

Explore the mandate for student-centric innovation and access tools to build an adaptable and agile digital strategy in our new white paper.

Fast forward to 2021. At the tail end of a pandemic that sent most campuses virtual, there are few leaders who haven’t gotten the memo: technology is a differentiator, and investments in data and digital enablement will be a key strategy for institutions hoping to thrive in the future.

0%

Source: 2020 Educause poll of senior IT leaders

0%

More areas of campus engaging with data strategy and analytics

As we worked with IT leaders grappling with these questions, EAB’s experts undertook research on data governance, decision support, and even IT system integration in higher education-all to support technologists hoping to deliver greater value from their digital investments. At the same time, IR leaders were partnering with different functional areas to help them leverage new analytics tools to surface insights. Unsurprisingly, they encountered similar issues: fragmented technology ecosystems, calcified data silos, and a growing appetite to make data and technologies more immediately actionable for non-technical users.

In student success, as advisors and faculty got deeper into using Navigate for data-informed interventions, they began clamoring for more information to further personalize student support. But as appetite for digital processes grew, institutions’ technical staff balked at the difficulty of making changes in their campus ecosystem-for example, the need to swap out a legacy student information system for something newer, without losing critical student-facing functionality. Similarly, our benchmarking work supported deans and chairs to contextualize key operational metrics like course completion rates by academic discipline, but was challenged by the varying quality of employee rank and class data-and pervasive campus data detractors highlighted a need to build better trust in institutional analytics.

Taken together, these issues sketch a common frustration: data strategy is central to innovation and it requires broad collaboration across campus-but it’s uniquely difficult to implement and maintain in higher education.

To tackle these challenges head on, EAB invested in Edify, our Education Data Platform. As we work with partners to simplify and democratize their campus data, our integration engineers, data scientists, and higher education experts are now working directly with more stakeholders to map and organize their systems and data to support broader campus data strategy. As our conversations expand into enrollment, centers for online learning, and even advancement, the opportunity to share insights with the broader higher education data and analytics community grows too.

Bringing tech research and analytics strategy together-on this blog

Given the growing community of EAB researchers, partners, and practitioners working together against higher education’s most pressing data challenges, we’re merging our IT Blog and Institutional Analytics Blog into one Data and Analytics Blog. We want this blog to be a place where higher education leaders within and beyond IT can find insights about all aspects technology and data strategy.

Across the coming months and beyond, we look forward to sharing more ideas and recommendations from experts and partner practitioners who play different roles and represent different perspectives on data and analytics strategy. Look for:

• Research on the cumulative costs of legacy technology and disconnected data in higher education

• Insight into novel analytics that campus leaders are using to address cross-cutting institutional strategies like equity, student success, and financial sustainability

• Recommendations for developing a people-focused data strategy to shepherd lasting change

And because your campus data strategy is everyone‘s job, we’ll keep curated lists of our most relevant insights available for everyone from your Cabinet executives, to your data converts, your analysts, and your infosec professionals.

We hope you’ll subscribe (if you haven’t already) and consider sharing the blog with a colleague-at your institution or within your peer network. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered here.

Build your student-centric digital strategy

Explore the mandate for student-centric innovation and access tools to develop a sustainable digital strategy for the years ahead.

Continue reading