Heidi Plus: supporting the humanities and social sciences through data-driven representation
Heidi Plus has been a cornerstone of The British Academy’s data work for over five years and has been a significant tool when analysing policy because of how robust and detailed it is.
By Pablo Roblero, senior policy and data analyst, The British Academy
Enabling improved discipline representation
We typically use Heidi Plus to analyse staff and student trends across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. There are two reasons we do this – our internal work, such as supporting decision making by the various Policy Committees that we convene – but also our external outputs which typically include policy reports, briefings, consultation responses, and interactive visualisations.
Depending on the focus of these activities, we will have a list of questions to answer. These could be the proportion of researchers on fixed-term contracts, the uptake at undergraduate and postgraduate levels for specific disciplines over time, the gender study gap in a particular discipline – the list goes on.
Heidi Plus enables us to access and analyse these sector trends, and to translate them into different visualisations. This is useful as we communicate with a variety of stakeholders, including policymakers and practitioners, and so can easily tailor the data to our audience.
“Having on-demand access to higher education datasets within Heidi Plus means that we can carry out activities more comprehensively, quickly and effectively. Just as importantly, it means that our work is underpinned by a solid evidence-base.”
The platform also enables rich time-series across datasets. This is particularly crucial for our monitoring work in the SHAPE Observatory, our growing evidence-based policy function which seeks to better understand – and therefore support – the health and development of our disciplines. We know that data snapshots can be useful but being able to track trends over time is extremely powerful. The significance of this has been highlighted during the development of our newest set of maps monitoring the regional provision of SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for the People and the Economy) subjects across the UK.
“Heidi Plus enables us to access and analyse sector trends, and to translate them into different visualisations.”
Complete flexibility and transparency
Some of our favourite visualisations at The British Academy include heat maps, line and bar charts; but there are lots of options and real flexibility within Heidi Plus to try things to see what works best. One useful tip is that the platform provides visualisation suggestions based on the data being used – this is particularly helpful for newer data users! It’s possible to work across the platform with other gold users. Colleagues can pick up where you’ve left off and vice-versa, or simply get an update on projects without having to check in directly. Permission and editing rights can be varied, so there’s a lot of flexibility and control in how we choose to share information.
Supporting our impact across society
Heidi Plus has helped us to develop and inform our work and, in turn, our impact – not just in the HE sector, but on a broader societal level. This includes our work to boost language capacity in the UK, to advocate for continued participation in important global study programmes and to understand the picture in a certain discipline – such as our Politics and International Relations report, which gained a lot of media attention and galvanised the disciplinary community. In all these instances, our aim was not simply to use data. It’s about using it to deepen understanding and to evidence meaningful responses to critical questions. Heidi Plus has offered a significant return on investment in allowing us to do this effectively. Having the data on-demand means we can respond quicker to news stories or questions from government, and the tools of the platform make the analysis itself much easier too.
“Heidi Plus has helped us to develop and inform our work and, in turn, our impact – not just in the HE sector, but on a broader societal level.”
Outstanding support when you need it
The staff at Jisc have always been friendly and quick to help with my queries when I’ve needed support. I also completed the Heidi Plus Essentials training course when I first started using Heidi Plus, which I would highly recommend to anyone who needs some confidence and help navigating the system.
About Heidi Plus
Jisc’s business intelligence platform Heidi Plus hosts a range of valuable higher education datasets across time in one place. These datasets include information on students, staff, finances, graduates, business and community interaction and much more. The data can be visualised easily using the cloud-based Tableau environment and provides outstanding insight.
About The British Academy
The British Academy is the UK’s national body and the voice for the humanities and social sciences. We exist in order to inspire, support and promote outstanding achievement and global advances in these subjects. We use insights from the past and the present to help shape the future, by influencing policy and affecting change in the UK and overseas. We take a three-pronged approach to our role and serve as:
- A fellowship of over 1000 outstanding academics and an international community of leading experts focused on people, culture and societies
- A funding body that supports the best ideas, individuals and intellectual resources in the humanities and social sciences – both nationally and internationally
- A forum for debate and engagement that stimulates public interest and enhances global leadership and policymaking
A requirement for high-quality, robust higher education data
The Higher Education and Research (HE&R) Policy team leads the Academy’s work championing the humanities and social sciences throughout the education and research ecosystem. This means that we spend a lot of our time seeking to influence national policies in order to support and protect the health and vibrancy of our disciplines, and you’ll often see us out and about promoting their importance and value. Our work tends to be a mix of proactive projects and policy work which is responsive to developments within the sector. Some of our thematic priorities include:
- Monitoring the health and development of humanities and social science disciplines using quantitative and qualitative data
- Understanding and articulating the skills gained through the study of the arts, humanities and social sciences and their impact on society and the economy
- Providing leadership on higher education and research policy including promoting healthy research cultures and exploring future approaches to research funding