Nelson Vincent, VP - IT & CIO, University of Cincinnati

Role of Big Data in the Education Space

What we find is everyone—students, faculty, staff and community partners—sees the potential and importance of big data and analytics. The economic and workforce demand for qualified graduates who are ready to enter this sector of the workforce is high and will continue to grow. Local data suggest that by the year 2020, total IT-related jobs will top 33,000—a 26.5 percent increase from 2010. In response to this need, a task force of about 70 faculty has guided the development of a proposed institute dedicated to computing, data sciences and analytics.

Universities also generate and are responsible for curating massive amounts of data. At UC, we recently launched an e-Science and digital humanities initiative with university libraries. This collaboration is guiding the establishment of a digital repository that captures data; organizes it; makes it accessible; and enables its reuse and reformatting. The university is the perfect place to develop new models to curate and make data transparently available.

Technology’s role in keeping pace with the change

We are beginning to have tools available to us that make it possible to utilize data to impact student success. These opportunities are transformative and can really change the direction that we take going forward.

Technology by Cincinnati

Our student enrollment this year exceeds 43,000. Industry estimates predicted undergraduate students would bring at least 3-to-5distinct wireless devices to campuses with them this fall. At any one point, we have 40,000-plus simultaneous wireless connections on our network.

Our students are a force for technology adoption. Our relationship with Student Government, and with students at-large, reflects the fact that our students are true partners in information technology and data and services. They are very well informed, and they are pushing the envelope. That is a good thing.

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