Data Analytics
EDUCAUSE 2024: Lessons from a Data-Driven Institution
Higher education institutions are using mountains of data to address the many challenges they are facing in 2024 and beyond. In fact, the data-empowered institution is the No. 1 issue on the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 list of technologies and trends in the industry. Colleges and universities know that getting their arms around the data they collect, establishing clear data policies and understanding what the data is telling them are critical to their future.
But while many institutions are just getting started on their data journey, disruptors like Western Governors University — the adult-focused, online-only institution founded in 1997 by a consortium of 19 U.S. governors — have been driven by student data from the start. Some of that was out of necessity, because there is no in-person interaction with students at WGU, but some was by design as the university’s early leaders took a technology-forward approach.
The result is more than 25 years of experience using data to keep students engaged, enrolled and on track to graduate, and at EDUCAUSE 2024 in San Antonio, two of the people behind WGU’s data-empowered approach explained how they use that data and what lessons more traditional institutions can take from their experience.
RELATED: How colleges leverage data to retain students as the enrollment cliff looms.
Participants
Ram Kumar Nimmakayala, Data Engineering Leader, Western Governors University
Nori Barajas-Murphy, Higher Education Ambassador, CDW
Narendra Pandya, Distinguished Data Engineer, Western Governors University
Video Highlights
- Higher education institutions across the country are looking for ways to use the data they collect to help more students reach graduation, with fewer bumps along the way.
- While some institutions are just starting to mine their data, online schools like Western Governors University have been using data for decades to track and monitor their students, who are primarily adult learners.
- WGU uses data to check in with students who may be stuck on a certain topic, who are struggling in a certain area or who are having problems they’re uncomfortable sharing directly with a professor.
- The years of working with data have also created a culture of collaboration among WGU’s staff that has made the program successful and manageable, they say.
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