It is an undeniable fact that with each passing day, big data is becoming more critical to business. In the years to come, the necessity of big data will spread to other sectors as well, especially education. In fact, in the last years, big data has had a significant impact on the educational sector. Educational facilities ranging from primary schools, secondary schools to even colleges and universities are able to gather, utilize, and share information much more rapidly and easily than ever before. There are a number of ways big data is being employed by universities around the world. SAS recently wrote a case study on the use of big data at the University of Alabama. Since this school has 38,000 students, it is able to consider how to amass a large amount of data. This is used for a variety of purposes from boosting their attrition rate to furthering the university reputation among other academics. Keep reading to learn more about how big data is changing the arena of education.
- Increase in requirement of data analysts
There is no point in collecting huge amount of data if no one is available to sit, study, analyze, and provide research paper help. Griffith College in Ireland covered these topics, when it talked about the benefits of learning big data. It is because of this there is a brimming demand of data analysts in the educational sector who can process the data meaningfully for the institution so that they can devise new strategies in the future. Moreover, trainers are also required to teach the educators how to use the data more effectively in classrooms and institutions.
- Strategy Planning
A major benefit that data analysts offer is processing data and once it is complete, the educational institutions can utilize the results to plan and form new strategies for the future. Moreover, the institutions can also find out what problems they are facing in their current educational system and work towards improving them. This was never possible before the arrival of big data in the education scene.
- Educators have better understanding of children
In the past, when parents had a meeting with the teachers, they always used to get haphazard reply regarding the areas their children were struggling. There was not a clear path of improvement. These parent-teacher meetings were never fruitful. This is why one Colorado school gave up with them altogether. However, with big data arriving on the scene, the situation has completely reversed. With the aid and assistance of big data, teachers can clearly analyze the areas of excellence as well as struggle for a particular student. The same information when conveyed to the parents, puts out a clear path that parents require following in order to bring about the necessary improvement in their ward.
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- Teaching methods are evolving
With the continued usage of big data in the educational sector, even the teaching methods are evolving. Now, the teachers do not have to stick to a single methodology of teaching. In fact, thanks to big data, educators can now use different methodologies to teach a same lesson. Not all students respond to the same learning methodology. With the aid and assistance of big data and the evolving technology, educators can tailor the teaching methodologies in accordance with individual learners. For example, who would have thought a few years back that even computer games can play a crucial role in learning. Students respond better to modern teaching methodologies as compared to traditional teaching methods.
- Sharing of information
A school might have different branches in different cities. Sometimes a student might have to shift from one branch to another branch. Moreover, a student might have to shift from one school to a different school, which can be outside the country also. In earlier days, it could be very time-consuming and difficult for the educators working at an institution to fetch information of a particular student who is coming from a different institution than theirs. However, thanks to big data, this scenario has completely changed. Now, the process of sharing information between different educational institutions is easy irrespective of the distance or the geographical boundaries between them. This is extremely beneficial for teachers who do not have to put in additional efforts to fetch the required information. On the other hand, this benefit the students too as their process of migration from one institution to another become pretty smooth and easy. They do not have to run from pillar to pillar to gather information from different sources.
Big Data is Changing the Field of Academia Forever
Hence, you can clearly see that big data, indeed, has a significant impact on the education sector. It will be interesting to see how this relationship between big data and education evolves in the future.