Data is the talk of the town. No, I am not referring to the android character Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation(yes, I am a Star Trek: The Next Generation enthusiast). I am referring to all of the information that we can gather about what we do in our workplaces, about our customers, about how well we are helping them (or not) and about our systems and processes. Data is the new gold in most businesses and the business side of education is no different. We need to know what data we are generating, how to gather and analyze it, what the data quality is, and how it can help us (or not) make better decisions and better serve our learners.
Our education organizations are swimming in data. There is data everywhere, so much so that it can be overwhelming trying sort out what we need to pay attention to and what we can ignore. There are the good starting points to help us move forward with our data. The first is to identify what important decisions we need to make. This then points us to the data we need to have in order to make those decisions.
The second starting point is to be practical and realistic. What data do we have access to? What data can we gather cost effectively? If it takes a long time and a lot of money to generate and gather a set of data, ask yourself if there is another set of data you can use that is more practical.
And finally, we have to ask equally important questions about our organization’s capabilities with data. Do we and our employees have the competencies we need to generate, collect and analyze our data? Are we actually producing accurate data or are we producing nonsense? The old adage, “Garbage in, garbage out” applies. If we put inaccurate and incomplete information, in other words garbage, into the systems that we use to generate our data, then the data we produce will be garbage. And even if we produce good data, do we have the skills to interpret and apply it correctly?
Yes, having data everywhere in our education organizations can be overwhelming. But if we identify the data we need to make decisions, ensure our data collection is practical, and build up the data competencies of our employees so that our data is accurate, we are off to a good start.
#dataineducation, #datadrivendecisionmaking