U Maryland, Baltimore County Rolls Out Student Analytics

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 01/21/10

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County has gone public with its implementation of analytics software from iStrategy Solutions. The institution recently received a Customer Leadership Award from Ventana Research for its work in improving its organizational performance.

The university is using iStrategy's HigherEd Analytics Student Module to promote data-driven decision-making in areas that include enrollment data analysis, student outcomes, course capacities, and student recruitment expenditures. One project the institution may undertake in 2010, as part of a massive multi-year Oracle PeopleSoft implementation, involves developing a link between its student administration system and its implementation of Blackboard using iStrategy to study final grade distribution in all courses and by disciplines.

"While [many online retailers] use analytics to predict what books customers will want to purchase, too few institutions are analyzing data about our students to predict the likelihood of their success," university President Freeman Hrabowski said. "[That's why] we are so excited about iStrategy...I can ask a number of different questions in just a few minutes and get all the answers myself...We can now take our analysis to a whole new level."

The university first implemented a data warehouse solution from iStrategy in 2006 for reviewing student data.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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