The Case for Small Data in Higher Education
While colleges and universities seek to utilize big, complex and aggregated data to generate insights to support students, big data is limited in its use to design interventions due to limits it inherently has. Small data, or onedimensional teaching and learning analytics, provide quality feedback to teachers and students. In this paper, we will discuss how Abilene Christian University (ACU) a private university in the western region of the United States, uses alert system to serve at risk students, IDEA evaluations to gather feedback to improve teaching, and data from the use of a learning management system Canvas to identify ways to improve student learning by providing formative evaluation for faculty to improve their practices. Towards the end of the paper we will discuss what students can do to make informed choices about their learning.
Intelligent Environments