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Data Mining at UCF Helps Measure Goals Against Booming Growth
4/3/2008
By creating a portal that gives users a single location to go for various report types, "we're trying to provide a total reporting solution," Borden said. Through the portal, administrators can get aggregate information about the university, such as geographic reports on where students are coming from. By drilling down to the deepest level of data, Borden said, "you're actually able to look at detailed [data for] an individual section of classes and the students who are enrolled in those classes." That can gives administrators and instructors a sense of who is taking what classes, for example, and may help in tailoring content.
Another example of analytic capabilities that Borden's department can now offer is the ability to pin down how long students have been in a particular major and how that affects issues such as retention and graduation rates.
"If your graduation rates are going up," Borden said, "is it because your students are more clearly identifying their majors ahead of time, or are they going up by default because we're retaining more of our students?" With the BI tools in place in more and more areas, Borden's group can answer those questions in detail.
Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.
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