Big data analytics is a fast-growing field and has a bright future according to experts. It is being embraced by more and more industries, more investments are flowing, and demand for experts is growing exponentially. The number of people obtaining data analytics certification too is rising every day.
Education sector has started to slowly embrace big data analytics for the development of learning and academic activities through the analysis of learner behaviour, activities and processes, as well as analysis of organizational and curricular processes, workflows and resources. Let us have a look at the needs, opportunities and challenges of big data analytics in the education sector.
Needs and Opportunities of Big Data Analytics
Improving students’ learning outcomes and helping them achieve their academic goals has become possible through big data analytics. Student performance assessment need not be limited to traditional tests, exams, etc. Each student’s unique data trail can be tracked and instantly analyzed to understand their strengths and weaknesses, answering time for different types of questions and subject areas, questions they skip, their unique academic skills, etc. Teachers and mentors can leverage this information to provide feedback, extra support and tutelage to students who require it, and overall create an enabling environment for students to flourish. The dropout rate can be reduced in the process.
Improving curriculum, teaching methods and processes has been made possible through analytics. Teachers, mentors and curriculum creators can identify what works and what does not in terms of curriculum, course content, structure, methods and processes, and change it accordingly. The teaching methods that best suit different sets of learners can also be identified.
Customization of the program for each student is possible through big analytics. Students can receive resources and training based on their level of learning and needs. Even with several thousand learners, it is possible to provide customization through the blended mode which is used by MOOCs today, where online learning is self-paced and offline/online guidance from teachers is also available.
Learning effectiveness can be bettered through both administrative/ teacher level interventions and self-measurement by learners with the help of big data analytics.
Cost reduction is possible through improved effectiveness and efficiency of programs, removing classrooms from physical confines, better time management, reducing attrition, etc.
Cross Collaboration and Comparison among different institutions and courses within an institution can be done with ease with the help of big data analytics.
Challenges:
Ensuring data flow is absolutely essential for big data analytics. Poor internet connectivity and poorly integrated data systems make it difficult to access data and ensure data flow. It will be counterproductive if poor quality and incorrectly formatted data are used for educational analytics.
Educating and training educators is another major and time-consuming challenge for the application of big data to the education sector. Even to get all teachers and mentors to cooperate and show eagerness is itself a big milestone.
With such big advantages and opportunities to use big data analytics, more institutions and organizations are striving to steer ahead of challenges, and embracing it for achieving better outcomes.
Role of Big Data Analytics in the business domains
Big data is the storage, measurement and analysis of large data sets. These data sets are so huge that it is not possible to work on them using traditional data analysis tools. The data sets may also be unstructured in nature which further makes them complex to deal with using traditional data sets. These days companies are investing in big data to enable their organization’s decision making and enhance its efficiency. They hire big data analytics specialists to work on big data sets and are willing to pay competitive salaries to them. These specialists earn their data analytics certification before they can be hired by organizations.
Major tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc use advanced big data methods and tools to work on their data and gather relevant customer insights. They also use it to enhance the user experience on their websites and apps. The unmanageable data of the past can now be effectively managed and understood thanks to big data.
Major financial institutions store huge volumes of data related to their customers. They operate on razor thin margins and need to focus on creation of useful insights for better outcomes. Big data can provide them with bigger profitability. McKinsey and company says that big data analytics is one of the top five catalysts that will drive job market growth and will boost the US economy by the year 2021.
Big data analytics has several benefits for the organizations.
Some of the benefits of big data are listed below –
Big Data Helps Identify Business Problem Areas
Financial institutions have used big data analytics to make sense of the relationship their customers share with them. They check the impact of each channel of the bank such as net banking, apps etc. Through their analysis they can understand what issues they are facing and how to solve them. They can address problem segments in their customer base and find the areas of concern within their business. Big data helps businesses to leverage the power of data and achieve better outcomes so that companies can stay ahead of competition.
Big Data Improves Speed of Decision Making
Big data also helps companies in taking faster decisions as it improves the speed of getting data insights. It also brings more accuracy to analysis compared to traditional data analysis tools. In this way, big data helps an organization stay one step ahead of their competition.
Big Data Helps Understand Customers Better
Big data helps understand the customers better. Customer data sets are large and unstructured and are usually found in different isolated subsets. Due to this, it is impossible working on them or understanding them to derive customer related insights. But big data solves this problem by providing quick and reliable insights related to customer preferences, purchase patterns etc.
Big data helps derive maximum benefit from marketing campaigns
Big data also helps a company in finding out key insights derived from their marketing campaigns on digital channels. By understanding what is working well in their campaigns and what is not, they can improve on their conversion rates through implementation of their learnings in real time.
Big data also provides detailed insights on existing customers’ preferences and buying patterns. This can be used in keeping the customers satisfied and upselling relevant products and services to them. Hence, big data helps retain existing customers as well as create new ones. This helps them stay ahead of their peers in the market as their own customers do not leave them while new ones keep on adding.
Big data allows companies to manage data efficiently
Big data provides strong computing power and robust storage solutions for large data sets. There are many third-party cloud service providers that help companies do this. This makes it possible for companies to work on data sets without burning a hole in their pockets.
Big data also allows the companies to let their employees work on these tools without having complicated technical knowledge of procedures related to collection and storage of data. Various formats of data can be worked on big data tools for multiple types of analysis. Data can be analysed in methods such as data visualisation, among others. This makes it possible to analyse data in an easy to understand manner. It also allows non-technical and non-statistical workforce to understand the data related insights in a user-friendly manner.
Big data helps improve organizational processes and allow companies to stay ahead of their competition in the market. Big data analytics is a necessary competency for businesses to have today. It acts as a key differentiator between companies and their competition. Big data analytics is still in early stages and many companies are yet to catch up. However, organizations have realised the potential that it has in helping them outperform their competition.
More Information:
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