Scope for Big-Data Analytics in Higher Education Student-teacher Engagements

ith the advancement of technology over the years, a lot of industries have W been able to streamline or improve their process thus improving efficiency & productivity. But higher education is one of the few industries that hasn’t witnessed much innovation in terms of

engagement and it could partly be because of the highly unstructured data pool or the lack of proper correlation-causality studies between various factors affecting the students’/institute's performance. However, with the emergence of big data, the possibility of analyzing voluminous amounts of data and

finding trends & relationships has become significantly simpler. Through this article, we look at the possibilities of applying big data analytics in higher education to enhance its engagement efficiency and see if it’s possible to construct a theoretical framework to

comprehensively evaluate a student’s performance as well as predict his/her success using key performance indicators. This knowledge could potentially help institutions maximize the students’ chances of academic

success by fostering conditions conducive to their success.

In order to rethink the fundamentals of

student-teacher engagement we have to approach it from both ends i.e. from the teacher’s perspective and the student’s. For any teacher or instructor, his/her effectiveness in engagement can be a result of their competencies in 3 segments. They are knowledge segment, social segment and technical segment.

The knowledge segment relates to the domain knowledge of the instructor and how well he/she can relay it to the students effectively. This aspect can be measured through the individual academic achievements of the

teachers such as publications, citations, awards & laureates.

The social segment relates to the interpersonal abilities of the instructor. The ability to communicate efficiently is one of the most important qualities of a good teacher which in theory is the only quality capable of inspiring critical thinking in students and this aspect of an instructor can be measured by cumulatively tracking their emotional

intelligence, feedback from students through surveys, professional interviews & communication benchmarks etc.

The technical segment relates to an instructor’s proficiency with respect to the latest technology that they could use to improve the quality of student engagement. Few examples under this segment could be the use of online classrooms, message boards, innovative assignment modules using technology etc. This aspect also plays an important role in improving student engagement because as generations progress, the technical abilities of the student community keep on increasing. So, in order to be able to inspire them, the instructors have to equally competent in all fields and that includes the technical segment as well.

Collecting all the above-mentioned data and making a score module would allow the institutions to score and

rank their faculty into 2 or 3 distinct categories based on their strengths & proficiency in all the 3 segments. Later this distinction can be used as a

criterion for matching the teacher category to the appropriate student category which increases the students’ chances of success.

Similar to an instructor’s effectiveness predictors, students also have a few traits and abilities that are capable of predicting their future success. They are cognitive & analytical abilities, selfawareness & response to leadership, concept mapping & visualization abilities and collaborative & social skills.

These are the logical and behavioral traits commonly found in all successful people and if scored and harnessed in students, it could lead to bolstering their chances of success post education.

Cognitive & analytical abilities are the logical and reasoning skills a student has and they are incredibly important in forming critical thinking and problem-solving abilities that lays the foundation for success. These abilities

can be measured through periodic assessments and once computed, the scores could prove useful in identifying areas of improvement and appropriate approaches.

Self-awareness & response to leadership aspect of a student would help instructors decide on appropriate counseling approaches to take with students. This aspect can also be measured with periodic personality assessments and the computed scores would as mentioned above show us

the category of approach and areas of improvements.

Concept mapping & visualization is a tricky aspect when it comes to measurement. It’s a trait or ability that actually helps a student understand and process abstract concepts like differentials, philosophy etc. and people with high concept mapping skills are usually better problem solvers since they have a deeper understanding of the problem and the causes leading to it. One way to measure this in students is to have

personal interviews with professional and have them rated. This score would

again help instituted design the best possible approach around the student’s abilities to ensure success.

Collaborative & social skills also play a very important role in determining the future success of a student and this can

be measured with the number and the

quality of interactions a student engages in with other students. There was no ideal way to track and understand the collaboration factor of

a student 10 years ago. But now, each and every student has a wide array of smart devices that keeps them online and that’s where most of the social interactions happen today. With the institutional ID, if the institutes can obtain the number of collaborators in

the student’s circle and how frequently they work on a project and how successful they are in completing the project, the institute can arrive at an empirical score for that trait and use it as one of the Key Performance Indicators in determining his/her success after graduation. If need be, the institution can also counsel him/her should they be found lacking in this trait.

This way, leveraging big data & analytics in fundamentally rethinking an institution’s approach to higher education & the student-teacher

engagements could help students achieve a higher rate of success after college and act as an accurate success prediction framework for universities as well.

Pratyush Kanda MBA 2020 - 2022