Data Analytics in Higher Education: Key Concerns and Open Questions

“Big Data” and data analytics affect all of us. Data collection, analysis, and use on a large scale is an important and growing part of commerce, governance, communication, law enforcement, security, finance, medicine, and research. And the theme of this symposium, “Individual and Informational Privacy in the Age of Big Data,” is expansive; we could have long and fruitful discussions about practices, laws, and concerns in any of these domains. But a big part of the audience for this symposium is students and faculty in higher education institutions (HEIs), and the subject of this paper is data analytics in our own backyards. Higher education learning analytics (LA) is something that most of us involved in this symposium are familiar with. Students have encountered LA in their courses, in their interactions with their law school or with their undergraduate institutions, instructors use systems that collect information about their students, and administrators use information to help understand and steer their institutions. More importantly, though, data analytics in higher education is something that those of us participating in the symposium can actually control. Students can put pressure on administrators, and faculty often participate in university governance. Moreover, the systems in place in HEIs are more easily comprehensible to many of us because we work with them on a day-to-day basis. Students use systems as part of their course work, in their residences, in their libraries, and elsewhere. Faculty deploy course management systems (CMS) such as Desire2Learn, Moodle, Blackboard, and Canvas to structure their courses, and administrators use information gleaned from analytics systems to make operational decisions. If we (the participants in the symposium) indeed care about Individual and Informational Privacy in the Age of Big Data, the topic of this paper is a pretty good place to hone our thinking and put into practice our ideas

Is MOOC Madness Here To Stay? An Institutional Legitimacy Study Of Employers

This dissertation aims to assess the degree of human resource personnel\u27s acceptance of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) providers. It is a critical part of understanding if MOOCs offer a viable and sustainable form of education because employer buy-in is essential to MOOCs\u27 success, according to many who have studied this online learning phenomenon. The sample for this study primarily was Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) board and committee members located in metropolitan areas throughout the U.S, with 112 qualified participants. Participants were recruited through email and other online methods to take the survey. The survey had three sections, including demographic questions, a Likert-like section based on key MOOC characteristics, and a choice-based conjoint (CBC) exercise in which participants selected the most qualified job applicant from a pool of mock candidates--some with MOOC credentials. The results of this study reveal that participants, though largely unaware of MOOCs, are generally receptive to them once learning of their attributes. However, participants still prefer traditional education and work experience more than MOOCs when screening applicants--a finding uncovered during the simulation exercise. Despite this preference for traditional employment credentials, participants showed statistically significant preference for MOOCs when combined with traditional education. These results have implications for many higher education stakeholders, including employers, students, and higher education institutions

Misaligned Values in Software Engineering Organizations

The values of software organizations are crucial for achieving high performance; in particular, agile development approaches emphasize their importance. Researchers have thus far often assumed that a specific set of values, compatible with the development methodologies, must be adopted homogeneously throughout the company. It is not clear, however, to what extent such assumptions are accurate. Preliminary findings have highlighted the misalignment of values between groups as a source of problems when engineers discuss their challenges. Therefore, in this study, we examine how discrepancies in values between groups affect software companies' performance. To meet our objectives, we chose a mixed method research design. First, we collected qualitative data by interviewing fourteen (\textit{N} = 14) employees working in four different organizations and processed it using thematic analysis. We then surveyed seven organizations (\textit{N} = 184). Our analysis indicated that value misalignment between groups is related to organizational performance. The aligned companies were more effective, more satisfied, had higher trust, and fewer conflicts. Our efforts provide encouraging findings in a critical software engineering research area. They can help to explain why some companies are more efficient than others and, thus, point the way to interventions to address organizational challenges.Comment: accepted for publication in Journal of Software: Evolution and Proces

Applying the Golden Rule towards Recruitment Effectiveness

The purpose of the present work was threefold: (1) to examine the perceptions of what makes retail recruiting organizations attractive to college undergraduates and examine what attributes recruiting organizations believe students are attracted to; (2) to examine the differences in these perceptions with particular interest in the role of the recruiters themselves and (3) to test whether specific recruitment attributes, ranked highly by the students, impacted variables already cited in the extant literature, in order to assist human resources professionals increase the effectiveness of their recruitment practices. In the fall of 2008, four in-depth interviews with key retail recruiters, and a focus group with six senior retail undergraduate students were held. The following spring a Q-study was administered to eight recruiters and nineteen students utilizing the data collected from the focus group and interviews. In fall of 2010 and early 2011, three conjoint analysis experiments were conducted to measure the impact of specific recruiter behaviors identified by the students as being of key importance to their attraction, upon the variables of personableness, informativeness and competence, widely cited as being of significance to applicant attraction in the recruitment literature. An additional experiment was conducted to measure the impact of these behaviors on likelihood to pursue an opportunity with this organization. The specific recruitment behaviors were summarized as structured interview format, relationship with student, and sustained presence on campus. Findings indicated that college undergraduates and recruitment professionals differ significantly in what they believe is of importance in attracting student applicants to organizations and the conjoint analysis experiments showed a strong influence by the identified recruitment behaviors on two of the variables from the extant literature

Inventing Organizations of the 21st Century: Producing Knowledge Through Collaboration

This manuscript examines a Process Handbook (PH) special project using a learning history form. A learning history is an assessment-for-learning, designed such that its value is derived when read and discussed by teams interested in similar issues. Its contents come from the people who initiated, implemented, and participated in the documented efforts as well as non-participants who were affected by it. A learning history presents the experiences and understandings of people who have gone through a learning effort in their own words, in a way that helps others move forward without having to "re-invent" what the original group of learners discovered. The content of the learning history creates a context for conversation that teams within organizations wouldn't be able to have otherwise. This learning history, and the PH project it describes, raises issues around knowledge creation and team structures by looking at how a project team of individuals from university, business, and consulting organizations was effective in creating new knowledge. The team members held different predispositions toward theory development, producing business outcomes, and developing capacity for action. Their complementary, and at times conflicting, interests provided a robust structure for knowledge creation. Knowledge created through this team structure is also multidimensional, having theoretical, methodological, and practical components.

Repositioning An Academic Department To Stimulate Growth

The complexity of the market in higher education, and the lack of literature regarding marketing, particularly branding, at the academic department level, presented an opportunity to establish a systematic process for evaluating an academic department’s brand meaning. A process for evaluating a brand’s meaning for an academic department is developed in this paper using Keller’s Customer Base Brand Equity model. This process will aid academic departments experiencing perception problems or wishing to improve their brand to better understand their existing brand meaning and assess the alignment between the student market perception and the industry market perception. This systematic process for evaluating a brand’s meaning is presented as applied to a case study.

Faculty Excellence

Each year, the University of New Hampshire selects a small number of its outstanding faculty for special recognition of their achievements in teaching, scholarship and service. Awards for Excellence in Teaching are given in each college and school, and university-wide awards recognize public service, research, teaching and engagement. This booklet details the year\u27s award winners\u27 accomplishments in short profiles with photographs and text

Awareness, Empathy, and Intention: Creating Constructive + Responsive Structures of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are three concepts widely understood as integral to positive organizational development. In a capitalist world, these notions are purposefully ignored or superficially discussed for financial and social gain. Prioritizing empathy, compassion, equity, and inclusion as worthwhile endeavours resist those tokenizing and disingenuous systems. This thesis explores the current perfunctory treatment of DE&I in organizations and examines how to incorporate intentional and human-centered values into organizational culture through intersectional thinking, applied empathy, and organizational storytelling. Recognizing lived experiences and personal narratives as equally valuable to quantitative data, this study entrusts both the individual and the organization with a responsibility to diversity, equity, and inclusion

A journey through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), the future of education for both the corporate and academic sectors. Special focus on the corporate sector and the field of information technology

https://www.ester.ee/record=b5366823*es