EDUCAUSE 2024: Lessons from a Data-Driven Institution

The result is greater than 25 years of experience using information to keep pupils engaged, enrolled and on course to graduate, and at EDUCAUSE 2024 in San Antonio, two of individuals behind WGU’s data-empowered method explained exactly how they utilize that information and what lessons a lot more typical establishments can draw from their experience.

While some establishments are simply starting to mine their data, on the internet schools like Western Governors University have been utilizing information for decades to track and check their students, who are mainly grown-up learners.

Yet while lots of institutions are just beginning on their information trip, disruptors like Western Governors College– the adult-focused, online-only establishment founded in 1997 by a consortium of 19 united state guvs– have actually been driven by student data from the start. A few of that was out of requirement, due to the fact that there is no in-person communication with students at WGU, but some was by design as the university’s early leaders took a technology-forward strategy.

Higher education establishments are utilizing hills of data to resolve the many obstacles they are dealing with in 2024 and past. The data-empowered establishment is the No. 1 problem on the 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 checklist of innovations and patterns in the sector. Schools understand that getting their arms around the data they gather, establishing clear data policies and recognizing what the information is informing them are vital to their future.