Group items tagged

Statement of purpose: "Data Conservancy is devoted to developing institutional solutions for the challenges of data collection, preservation and re-use." Developed at Johns Hopkins University, but available for use by other large institutional data collections, this site explains one large-scale data repository model.

Tagline: Data sharing & collaboration made easy. Buzzdata allows users to share data sources, either within their own private network or more publicly. This data can then be used with other data (mashups) or for visualizations, or analyzed by journalists/academics.

By Nick DeSantis, technology column, The Chronicle of Higher Education April 15 2012. According to this article, at present most student-related data (grades, course selection, graduation rates, etc.) is "locked-up" within colleges. In this new era of "open data" the Dept of Ed and others are calling on colleges and universities to make this data more accessible to developers -- including students in their own institutions.

The United States Department of Education has recently launched ED Data Express to make some of the Department's data available to the public. There are a variety of "views" of the data (e.g. state "snapshots," state tables), as well as the opportunity to build your own view.

Microsite produced by The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2012. This space provides data and analysis about completion for all aspects of the college spectrum: public universities, community colleges, private colleges, and non-profits. All data is from the cohort that began college in fall 2004.

From the Online Guide to Methodological Issues in Qualitative Data Sharing and Archiving.

By Karon Kelly, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Colorado State University, Research Data Management Workshop, March 24, 2011. This is a PDF of a powerpoint describing the significance of data curation in the hard sciences.

Posted by Bruce Trachtenberg on The Communications Network May 17 2011. A description of the 2011 Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference, which included Molly Martin on how to combine data and storytelling.

By Lloyd Armstrong on his blog Changing Higher Education, May 23 2011. Announcement of a new Gates Foundation grant to aggregate data from several large post-secondary systems that are members of WICHE (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Ed) in order to get a better picture of outcome data.

Posted by Clay Johnson, 10/25/2011 on ExpertLabs In the context of experts' conversations with government, the author of this post argues that tools such as IdeaScale, Google Moderator and UserVoice are useful for brainstorming but not the best method for a true dialog. These tools give government an excuse to "not" participate with people where they are. The comments on a government site, i.e. the dialogue on evolving data.gov (via IdeaScale) shouldn't replace "participating with practicitioners," which should happen where they are. (i.e. in a Jam, I.F.) Expert Labs aims to get more people involved in order to make policy better. Expert Labs publishes reports, constantly updates their blog and has developed a tool, ThinkUp, that enables users to automatically archive data and communications across Facebook, Twitter and Google+, encouraging engagement on these networks.

By Jennifer Zaino on semanticweb.com, January 30, 2012. Education sector not mentioned in article but this tool could be applicable when looking at data sets of any unstructured data.

Presented by the Knight Digital Media Center, these presentations are described as "multimedia and internet technology training workshops," on topics like Digital Storytelling ("How to tell stories with Data (Reallly)") and Web 2.0 Training ("Digital Visualization Strategy and Workflow" or "Data Visualization on a Budget"). While the workshops are geared to journalists, many of the lessons might be relevant to those in other public-facing fields as well.

By Amanda Coffey and Paul Atkinson, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996. This book forwards the idea of qualitative researchers using a single data set analyzing using a number of different techniques.

This is a free service of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP), maintained by Texifter. (See QDAP tag) . Tools in this toolkit facilitate coding of text data sets, enable annotation with shared memos, and provide tools to assist with managing team collaborations (permissions, etc.)

By Doug Lederman in Inside Higher Ed, May 12 2010. Review of the Action Analytics Symposium, which was co-sponsored by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (29 public 2-year and 4-year institutions) and Capella Univesrity (a for-profit, online institution). The concept is "a multi-dimensional effort aimed squarely at fundamental and strategic education reform in the context of massive economic, social, and technological change... [A]ction analytics strategically uses data, statistics, predictive modeling and visualization to promote student success, achieve institutional efficiency, and demonstrate transparency."

Whole page of resources on distance learning for college students--really like the podcast: New Gates Foundation Grants Focus on "The Learning Moment." Mark Milliron, Gates dep director for higher education (in February 2011 at least) focuses on data to target at risk students, triggering student support, and tailoring that student support to meet the students' needs. He also emphasizes the leveraging of technology to support students and for data collection and analysis

Created by the Advocacy & Policy Center of the CollegeBoard and published in 2012. From About the Arch, "The Completion Arch is a web based tool that provides quick and easy access to national, state and initiative-level data that describe the progress and success of community college students." Click "Explore the Arch" for an overview and to get started.

By Laura S. Quinn, Idealware, January 2012. Looks at a variety of software tools that can support program evaluation. Report includes a category on Analyzing and Displaying Your Measures, which might be most relevant. There are recommendations for report builders, tools that help create data visualizations, both quantitative and qualitative analysis tools, and dashboard recommendations.  Also reference to an organization called Innovation Network, which might be of interest.

This project was completed in December 2006 and has now been archived. The online guide (link from this page) is of interest. Focus in this work: data sharing and archiving.