The Accountability Promises of Academic Analytics

Nancy Parker, PhDAthabasca University

WCET, Atlanta Nov 2007

Outline

•Contexts

•Stakeholders expectations

•Data strategies and concerns

Definition

Academic Analytics

The practice of mining institutional data to produce “actionable intelligence” Campbell, DeBlois, Oblinger (2007)

“May include reporting, predictive modeling, and what-if analysis and the use of information to automatically trigger business processes.” Goldstein (2005)

Higher Education Communication Challenges•Information Asymmetry

Consumer EducationRatings•Fraud

State Control MechanismsSelf Regulation

•MobilityAggregators

Web Geography

Public Environment

Clients for Data

•GovernmentsInternational CompetitivenessLocal Responsiveness

•Taxpayers and DonorsReturns on Investment

•Learners and their families•Institutional Governance (Trustees)•Administrators, Instructors, Researchers

Priority Areas for PSE Data

•Workforce skills•Innovation and knowledge transfer•Active, healthy citizenry•Quality PSE•Access and opportunity for under-represented groups•Lifelong learning•Affordability

Canadian Council on Learning

Strategic Intentions

•Inform policy

•Enhance responsiveness

•Improve learner choice

•Strengthen governance

Purpose and Re-purpose Data

Production (Transactional Systems) -- Warehousing -- Validating -- Mining -- Reporting

The Roots of Effectiveness

System Contribution

Institutional Effectiveness

Program Learning Outcomes

General Educational Outcomes

Course Objectives

Concerns

Who determines what data are collected, stored, re-purposed?

•Enterprise wide definitions •Record retention and release•How are profiles used (ethical)? •Privacy (legal)•Resource Allocation

Getting Out Ahead of the Train

Higher education professionals at once accede to the idea of accountability and regard performance indicators as highly constructed and artificial means of measuring real output. As the term accountability implies, people want to know how to trust one another, to make their trust visible, while (knowing that) the very desire to do so points to the absence of trust.

Strathern (2000)“The Tyranny of Transparency”