Big Data and Analytics for Education

Big Data is having an influence everywhere and education is not an exemption. Big data is becoming a fruitful tool in the education system. In the last decade, learning has changed its phase from a passive to an active experience. The traditional education system requires classrooms, textbooks, reference books, teachers, and all institutional management which are now drastically changing. Institutions are no longer required to continue education in a conventional way. From homeschooling programs that have become highly effective to the online colleges, to the efficient online educational tools to boost professional career, the opportunities to expand intelligence of learner from their desk are abundant.
Big Data is Making Education More Interesting, Affordable and Available
Big Data is assisting educational institutions and companies to understand things they could not have previously. For student enrollments, Big Data and predictive analytics have the ability to prepare analytical databases which can cater to college administrators with fast, actionable information. This information helps them to take smart enrollment decisions and allocate both staff time and financial resources to raise enrollment from current markets while constructing new ones. Companies like edX are using Big Data to determine what kinds of classes can be conducted online and which are best suited to a classroom culture.
From a student’s viewpoint, Big Data and predictive analytics can assist the candidate to shortlist colleges that best fit their profile. These conclusions based on thousands of data points that can guide the applicants towards those colleges and universities which will be the best match to their profile. College students are increasingly using social media to guide and influence their college choice.
Reshaping Learning Through Big Data
While considering modern-day educational learning, there’s no doubt that students are having more options than ever before. They can learn at their convenience from home, the coffee shop, or the classroom with the assistance of Big Data as a tool which is more powerful than conventional learning.
Digitized Textbooks
Future Textbooks will be not likely to anyone who carried around heavy backpacks in their high schools and colleges. The transformation from a backpack that’s full of books to a slim smartphone has been an ongoing phenomenon for some time, but the future textbooks will be increasingly interactive, collaborative, and updated for accuracy in real-time.
Greg Fenton, CEO of Redshelf (the digital textbook company) says, “There is a plenty of information available on students’ habits of reading and the amount of time they spend for studying. With online textbooks, publishers and professors now have access to information that shows exactly how, when, how often and why the students use textbooks.”
This data assists publishers with insights that inform the editorial process and also gives teachers access to information that can help them to improve as the instructions based on student’s learning habits. With the digital textbook, updates can be automated in real time whenever required, homework sections in the book also can be graded in real time, video files and audio files can be installed, and much more.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT market is continuously expanding, from consumer electronics, manufacturing, e-commerce, autonomous vehicles, drones, and education. IoT integration is much beneficial for higher education because its cloud capabilities reduce hardware costs. Most of the students have Internet-connected devices which create an academic infrastructure that is no longer restricted by traditional barriers, such as geographical location, language, specialized learning needs. It makes the campus without a physical library. All books can be digitized and readily available for every student at the same time, independent of the number of copies of physical books unlike before.
Personalization
Plenty of data and analytics tools available to give an opportunity to create a high level of personalization. Every single learner isn’t the same, thus teachers can become much more effective when equipped with the tools to evaluate the student’s abilities and challenges. Most of the students get bored while studying in a textual format so now, textbooks are not only coming with just a digital copy, but also they have web-based sites that include animations, videos, and sample quizzes. Digital textbooks have benefited with an active feedback loop in which students and teachers can note areas of confusion also they can highlight the tools that are helpful. Changes and improvements made in real time can actually be profitable for the students and teachers immediately, instead of semesters or years later unlike before.
Big Data for e-learning: From Classroom to Corporate World
Now e-learning is not only limited to classrooms for studies, but it also benefits to the corporate world for the improvement of employee skills within least time span. Also, the e-learning is becoming more useful for physically handicapped and ill students who can’t attend classes, it helps them to overcome the losses they suffer due to unavailability in the classrooms. The conventional classrooms are also becoming e-classrooms which provide e-learning, helps students to easily grasp knowledge as it is available in pictorial forms. Big Data is fruitful in e-learning as learning material is analyzed based on usefulness and acceptability to make it readily available for all at the same time.
Generally, the goal of any invention is to make the life of a human being easy and comfortable. The Big Data also altered the way of learning by making it easy, simple and interesting. The traditional classroom environment is no longer necessary for learning. Technology will continuously make learning easy for the convenience of students, no matter someone likes it or not.