February 13, 2019 Big Data Enhancing The Student Experience

Today big data is used in many areas, including the enhancement of the students' learning experience, helping them to get better results.

February 12, 2019

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two or three years, you’ll have heard about the big data companies of the world and how they’re gathering everything there is to know about us, creating profiles and then taking this information to make more money.

At least that’s how a lot of the media is portraying it. Whether you agree or you couldn’t care less, the fact of the matter is that it’s happening around the world, but what if this ‘big data’ could be used for something beneficial;

Perhaps something like education?

Today, we look into the world where big data could be used to enhance a student’s learning experience, helping them to get better, more effective results and the resulting impacts of what this collaboration could, and does, have.

Optimized Decision Making

If you make a decision with absolutely no idea what’s going on, the chances that you’re not making the best decision are extremely high. While this might not matter when it comes to choosing dishes for your dinner party, when it comes to a student’s education, and therefore their entire lives, it’s not worth taking the risk.

The future generations need people who are active in making the best decisions they can. Fortunately, big data can provide valuable insight into the current and predicted states of the education system, ensuring people have everything they need to make the big decisions.

This effects everyone in the education system from a government level to area leaders, head teachers and individual teachers on a classroom to classroom basis.

Analyzing Student Results

Another part of improving the education state is seeing where you are now and then highlighting the areas that need improving. However, you won’t be able to make accurate and effective improvement recommendations if you don’t know what’s going on right now, which is only possible by reviewing student results.

“Using big data, you’ll be able to see exactly where every student is and then hundreds of other data points and the connections between the results and the circumstances. What’s more, with the introduction and developments of AI, this will be able to identify patterns we couldn’t even comprehend” explains Ben Hardy, a data scientist for Australia 2 Write and Brit Student.

Advanced Career Prediction

For decades, the education system has tried to predict the careers of its students in the hope of trying to cater to the styles of education to the students to give them the best journey possible. However, without accurate information or the ability to process it properly, this is simply impossible.

“Using big data, computers and humans will be able to predict career paths and progression journeys with unprecedented accuracy, and this will bring a wondrous range of benefits to the education system in terms of personalized learning paths” shares Tina Arnold, an education expert for WriteMYX and 1Day2Write.

General Classroom Improvements

When it comes to big data, the benefits and uses won’t all be used for or aimed towards the students. Big data will also affect teachers and entire schools, colleges, and universities. Big data will be, and can, analyze all aspects of an educational institute over hours, days, months or even decades, and will be able to offer improvements and advice, as well as to highlight potential issues, even before they arise and cause problems.

Furthermore, it doesn’t even need to be used to make general ‘improvements.’ Let’s say one student is a visual learner but another is great at reading books, but they’re in the same class. Dig data will allow the teachers to easily understand which students learn the best using which methods and can cater the class to suit, so everyone can stay on the same page.

Improved Learning Materials

Hand in hand with the considerations above, once big data is being fully implemented into schools and the education system, it can also be used to improve the lesser known areas of the system. For example, learning resources such as textbooks and online presentations, and the sorts, can be improved to create a more streamlined and effective result.

For example, in a very practical sense, computer algorithms will be able to read learning material text and video and analyze it using big data. The computer can then identify which areas of the text need to be improved, which part students will find complicated and which areas can, overall, be streamlined.

Overall, with all these areas implementing big data, the education system as we know it will, and already is, changing forever. As long as everyone involved is able to interrupt the data properly, big data could bring about amazingly positive changes to the world.

A writer and editor at Academic Brits and Origin Writings, Ellen Lawton has a keen interest in big data but also nurtures a big love for educational technology thus combining the two in her research. She also works alongside data analysts to create strategies and in her spare time, she writes for online technology magazines and blogs.

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