How Technology Improves Higher Education Management

The Arizona State University admits 90% of applicants, and it’s six-year graduation rate is 57%, according to a Hanover Research report. In an ideal world, both numbers should be nearly the same, but in our world higher education institutions are constantly struggling with factors that cause student dropouts, which is probably the main headache for campus leaders.

Considering this, the perfect equation should be providing a top of the line learning experience at reasonable costs, and universities have been implementing a wide variety of technological solutions to improve campus management, learning experiences, and student retention strategies.

The best thing about these tools is that they can be customized according to each institution, including different features from different faculties and campuses. The following ones are the main technological solutions that higher education institutions worldwide are currently using to get better results. 
 

Big Data Platforms

The learning process generates a huge amount of information, that universities can use to monitor and analyze how students from every faculty are doing. But, how to manage such vast data without dedicating too much resource time in gathering information or hiring an army of specialized professionals?  

Big data platforms specially designed for colleges and universities are an efficient solution for institutions, whether they are a small community college or a big national university.

The University of Berkeley’s School of Information explains that student’s behavior can be followed to analyze patterns within an institution to:

• Personalize the learning process.
• Reduce classroom administrative work.
• Help faculty refine content to keep relevant.
• Facilitate both global and local community development.
• Measure student performance beyond test scores.

In a previous blog we explained that due to this data process universities have been able to get input like:

• Engagement metrics.
• Rosters.
• Grades.
• Attendance information.
• Examinations.
• Surveys.

Cloud computing

For higher education institutions, technology based on the cloud can be a good answer for several aspects of the academic daily life. Cloud computing offers the following solutions:

• Online availability allows academics to improve institutional productivity, accessing to data in any given moment from everywhere in the world.
• Universities save resources by renting or buying a remote platform that is supported and maintained by a third-party supplier.
• The online cloud boosts collaborative work both for students and teachers, because de can access to a vast data from everywhere. Besides, it also facilitates the interdepartmental collaboration.  
• Your strategic data is safely stored in a different location from your campuses, far away from domestic or foreign attacks.
• Cloud helps to filing historical data and archives, and managing fastly.
• Contributes to financial and HR management.
• Improves accountability. 

Simulation Software

Every year universities start wondering if their current assets and facilities will be able to contain the new group of freshmen in an optimal way. Nowadays, simulation software allows institutions to create several fictitious scenarios to determine essential factors in campus management, such as:

• Classroom allocation.
• Teachers and students schedule designing.
• Campus assets optimization.
• Resources for every campus or faculty.

Simulation software will provide answers for essential management questions like:

• How many students are we going to assign to each class?
• How many teachers do we have to teach that subject?
• How many classrooms do we need to meet this demand?
• Do we have enough classrooms to meet this demand?
• If all my campus classrooms are already taken, do we have to build new classrooms?
• How much does it cost?
• Is this investment really necessary?

In your opinion, what are the most important issues in higher education management that should be supported by technological solutions? I invite you to share your opinion.