Big data offers many benefits to students and educational institutions.
Big data provides educators with unprecedented opportunities to reach and instruct students in new ways. Its also allows for a deeper understanding of students' educational experiences, reduces dropout rates, and helps schools adjust funding and enrollment strategies.
Improving Student Achievement
The general idea behind utilizing big data in the education system is to improve student achievement. Currently, the only measure of student achievement is answers to homework assignments and tests. However, over the course of a lifetime, each student generates a unique data trajectory. Analyzing these data trajectories in real-time will help to better understand individual student behavior and create the best learning environment for students.
With the help of big data in education, it is possible to monitor student behavior, such as how long it takes to answer a question, which resources are used to prepare for a test, or which questions are skipped, to name a few. These and similar questions can be answered automatically and immediately, giving each student instant feedback.
Customized Programs
With big data, programs can be customized for each student. Even though colleges and universities have thousands of students, it is possible to customize programs for each student. This can be done with the help of so-called "blended learning" - a combination of online and offline learning. This gives students the opportunity to take courses that interest them and learn at their own pace, while still having the possibility to receive offline instruction from professors.
We've seen this in the case of MOOCs developed and delivered around the world. For example, when a machine learning class at Stanford University was taught by Andrew Ng, only 400 students attended. However, when the same course was taught as a MOOC, it attracted 100,000 students.
Reducing dropouts
Since big data in the education sector will help improve student performance, dropout rates in schools and universities will also decrease. Educational institutions can perform predictive analytics on all the data collected to give them an idea of future student performance. Such predictions would also help in scenario analysis of lesson plans before introducing them into the curriculum, minimizing the need for iterative experimentation. In fact, big data can also be used to monitor how students perform in the job market after college. This will also help prospective students to choose the right university and program.
Assist schools in adjusting funding and enrollment strategies
With the help of big data in education, institutions can predict applicants more accurately and also analyze possible factors that affect the application process. This knowledge will enable institutions to adjust their recruitment strategies and allocate funds accordingly. Such a large amount of data will also help students analyze information about schools around the world, speeding up the search and application process for international students.
To summarize
Big data has the potential to revolutionize the learning industry in the coming years. Smart students will have a positive impact on organizations and society. Therefore, it is time to embrace big data in the field of education.
