Understanding your data

The issue

Activity data is the record of any user action, online or in the physical world, that can be logged on a computer. 

Universities and colleges have long collected vast amounts of data; from figures on how students use the library, to recruitment statistics and academic research citations. Owing to recent changes in the kinds of data they are asked to submit to bodies like UCAS, there are now new opportunities for analysing that data. 

The digital opportunity

Smart leaders analyse their institution’s data using digital tools to uncover hidden patterns and help them improve their research, make the student experience work better and ensure their business remains efficient. Our report looks in detail at balancing strategy and tactics for analytics across the whole institution.

Challenges for institutions come in the shape of managing similar data from different sources, data that needs cleaning up, and maintaining security. See our guide to managing your data well.

How you can use activity data

Understand how the landscape is changing

There have been recent changes in the statutory requirements for universities and colleges to collect and provide data, for example the Key Information Sets on every university website.  Our guide analytics: what is changing and why does it matter will help you keep up to date.

Use student data to improve the student experience

We believe you can usefully analyse data from across your student-facing systems, for example:

• student retention data, which can help you identify students at risk of dropping out
• library user data, to help create recommendations for students based on what their peers are reading
• journal usage data, which among other uses can help you base your library subscriptions on actual usage

Where can I get some inspiration?

We’ve developed case studies to show how institutions are using analytics for learning, teaching and research, enabling institutions to learn from one another’s good practice: 

• Using analytics for learning and teaching to improve teaching and identify students at risk
• Using library activity data to establish a correlation between library usage and student attainment
• Developing a service to recommend resources to students

Understand your academic research

As part of the impact agenda institutions are collecting data of concern to individual researchers, research groups, universities and other institutions, cross-institutional groups, funding bodies and governments.  This creates a huge opportunity for us to understand our research processes and outcomes. 

Make reliable predictions for your business

Our business intelligence infoKit can help you use today’s data to plan for tomorrow.

Understand how people are using your digital resources

We’ve developed an online toolkit which helps you use data from your digital resources to understand how people are accessing and using them and what to do next.

The Raptor system is a piece of software that analyses log files to bring you usage statistics for any e-resource.

The Journal Usage Statistics Portal can help you base your journal subscription purchasing on access rates.

Keep it legal

When working with data, it's important to be aware of the implications of issues like data protection, confidentiality and consent, and freedom of information legislation. Read more about the legal, risk and ethical aspects of analytics in higher education.

Looking ahead

We're researching new ways your organisation can use analytics data to improve academic library services and demonstrate value and impact. We're also developing a shared library anlytics service - you can follow progress on the project blog.