Ivy Tech Predicting Student Performance With Big Data
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe largest post-secondary education system in the state is using big data to try to predict success or failure of students. Ivy Tech Community College Chief Technology Officer Lige Hensley says the school’s Project Early Success program has shown 83 percent accuracy in predicting students’ 16-week performance three weeks into a term through behavior pattern analysis. Hensley says Ivy Tech is pulling in about 100 million rows of data per day through its efforts.
In an interview on Inside INdiana Business Television, Hensley said, security issues pose a challenge, but Ivy Tech has "complete and utter control" of its data systems. "Certainly, security is one that’s on our mind with every project that we do," he said. "The cloud vendors out there today have really embraced that. A lot of the security issues are really in the hands of the user." That security, he said, extends down to the row or column level of data.
Project Early Success launched last fall and it draws together data from some of its 1,200 college-controlled information technology systems. Hensley says data "trails" left by students are collected and analyzed. The results could help Ivy Tech with issues such as student attraction and retention.