JISC

Analytics enables organisations to extract useful insights they can act on from the data they collect as part of their daily business (activity data), thus helping them to increase their efficiency and effectiveness.

Institutions automatically collect data on how their customers (students, academics etc) interact with their standard business systems (finance, library etc). By analysing this data, they can uncover hidden patterns to help them improve their business or services.

Analytics enables organisations to forecast and make reliable predictions: in our business intelligence infoKit, it is taken as indicating the highest level of business intelligence maturity.  Analytics can help your institution answer specific questions aimed at improving a service, or help you search serendipitously for hidden insights which can help you to improve some aspect of your business.

• For some quick tips on how to get started with analytics, read our blog, join in the discussion and explore our series of 11 briefings from Jisc Cetis. Analytics: what is changing and why does it matter? introduces the series. Titles include:
• Analytics for the whole institution: balancing strategy and tactics. Areas where analytics can be fruitfully applied include: student retention (identifying students at risk of dropping-out); recommender services (e.g. students on your course also looked at these books); and optimising resource investment (e.g. basing library subscriptions on usage of resources) 
  • Analytics for learning and teaching, which  draws on case studies to illustrate how analytics can be used to improve teaching and identify students at risk.
  • Analytics for understanding research. Analytics is already used in research management (e.g. bibliometrics), but there are now opportunities to do more.
  • Legal, risk and ethical aspects of analytics in higher education, which discusses the implications of issues such as data protection, confidentiality and consent, and freedom of information legislation.
• Good management of activity data is essential for effective analytics. See our report, Activity data – delivering benefits from the data deluge, which outlines the new opportunities and challenges for universities and colleges, and our guide Exploiting activity data in the academic environment.
• Case studies mentioned in the analytics series include the use of library activity data to establish a correlation between library usage and student attainment; and the development of a service to recommend resources to students .