Academic Analytics in quality assurance using organisational analytical capabilities

The combination of increased environmental complexity and greater quantities of data presents higher education with new problems. Institutions have responded by adopting business analytics approaches from the commercial sector. These approaches, applied in higher education as academic analytics or learning analytics, are designed to improve organisational and educational effectiveness. However, despite extensive research in academic analytics there is an identified need for further work in making analytics “actionable”, a problem of ‘IT in use’. Recent research in business analytics has investigated this problem using a business process orientation combined with an examination of business capabilities for analytics use. Adopting this perspective we apply it to academic analytics in the context of quality assurance, describing an outline approach to the problem of actionable academic analytics

Developing Data Literacy for Data Enabled Student Success

Tapping in to the potential benefits of learning analytics requires staff and students in higher education to be proficient in data literacy. This poster reports on a project to review and identify professional development needs for learning analytics, with an emphasis on the effective use of learning data to promote student success. We report on the development of an evidence based strategy and implementation plan that addresses the skills gaps and professional development requirements of students and higher education staff who teach or lead teaching and learning enhancement. The outputs will enable upskilling of staff and also facilitate students to be more aware, and make greater use of, their own data ‘footprint’. This facilitates the development of important life skills such as self-regulation and self actualisation. In the broader institutional context, this should have the resulting impact of more widespread adoption of evidence based decisions that support student success initiatives

Attacking Seven Rounds of Rijndael under 192-bit and 256-bit Keys

The authors of Rijndael [DR98] describe the "Square attack" as the best known attack against the block cipher Rijndael. If the key size is 128 bit, the attack is faster than exhaustive search for up to six rounds. We extend the Square attack on Rijndael variants with larger keys of 192 bit and 256 bit. Our attacks exploit minor weaknesses of the Rijndael key schedule and are faster than exhaustive search for up to seven rounds of Rijndael