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"The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. At long last they have started to include data fields for online education (technically distance education, the vast majority of which is online) starting with the preliminary data released through Fall 2012 term. Despite all of the talk about data and measuring online programs, we can only now start to get official information from a central source rather than relying on surveys or institutional data."

"As higher education institutions in the United States strive to maximize their use of resources to better support students, it is now more critical for professionals to make data-informed decisions. Most institutions are currently gathering an abundance of data from multiple sources, which provides a good opportunity for functional units, divisions, and departments to share timely and relevant data and collaboratively deliver programs and services. Three of many integral units that are involved in data-informed strategies are institutional research (IR), student affairs, and information technology (IT). Thus, three higher education membership associations, the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, and EDUCAUSE partnered to conduct a survey that examined the current landscape of institutions' use of data and analytics for student success. This report describes a variety of challenges and opportunities regarding institutions' readiness to expand their use of data across functions."

The UL system has teamed up with the SAS software company of Cary, N.C. and MyEdu, of Austin, Texas, to create a massive data trove that should help make students more marketable to prospective employers and help those companies find the desired types of students. "This partnership allows us to use data to connect the dots," Woodley said. "It allows us to use data to target-market opportunities to our students they may not have known about."

"The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) confers numerous rights upon data subjects who are located in the EU, including the "right to be forgotten." It also requires that covered organizations put significant processes and safeguards into place regarding the collection, use, and processing of personal data of data subjects located in the EU. Failure to comply with GDPR can result in an enforcement action and significant financial penalties. Due to both the borderless application of GDPR and the concept of territoriality, the regulation has broad implications for organizations around the globe, including US colleges and universities."

"To help consumers understand the data being collected about them, Acxiom just launched a new website called AboutTheData.com. The site allows you to enter some personal information (name, birthdate, etc.) and discover what marketers think about you. Granted, the site is likely also a way for Axciom to build up its reservoir of data, but it's kind of fun to see what the marketing data says about us."

"This report is the result of a research partnership between Burning Glass Technologies, BHEF, and IBM, motivated by the need to close the data science and analytics skills gap through data driven insights and increased collaboration between higher education and industry. It defines the data science and analytics (DSA) landscape, presents research findings about the skill gap, adds context to the DSA jobs and skills that are disrupters, and offers recommendations to alleviate the DSA talent shortage."

"Thanks to a new addition to Google's Takeout service, YouTube users can now download all of their videos in one fell swoop. For those unfamiliar, Google's Takeout service, which is a part of Google's "Data Liberation Front," allows users to download key data hosted by Google in one file. Data includes Google Docs, chat history, Picasa albums, and now YouTube videos."

"Google has launched its own Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to teach the general public how to understand surveys, research, and data. Called "Making Sense of Data" and running from March 18 to April 4, the course will be open to the public and, like most MOOCs, will be taught through a series of video lectures, interactive projects, and the support of community TAs."

"Education is increasingly occurring online or in educational software, resulting in an explosion of data that can be used to improve educational effectiveness and support basic research on learning. In this course, you will learn how and when to use key methods for educational data mining and learning analytics on this data."

"The National Academy of Education (NAEd) released a new report on Big Data in Education: Balancing the Benefits of Educational Research and Student Privacy. The report addresses a fundamental tension of how to reap the educational benefits that access to comprehensive "big" data provides while ensuring student privacy."

"Every time a student interacts with their university - be that going to the library, logging into their virtual learning environment or submitting assessments online - they leave behind a digital footprint. Learning analytics is the process of using this data to improve learning and teaching. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place. Using the increased availability of big datasets around learner activity and digital footprints left by student activity in learning environments, learning analytics take us further than data currently available can."

"We are seeing a surge in firms with offers to take institutions' data so that they can reformat it and make it available as dashboards, with trends and models. It is time to ask: Who is doing our data laundry, and why?"

Great background article on big data. Provides lots of consumer examples. Sort of sobering when you see all of the ways our usage is tracked and commodified.

Mr. Shirky said. "The thing that drives me craziest in conversations with large institutions about large data sets is they want to know in advance what will happen. Why should we open up our data? To which the answer is, you open up your data to see where the value is. It's the value you can't even predict until you try it that you get back."

". By analyzing the data behind past, current and competitive Instagram hashtags, it's easy to set objectives by showing what works, monitoring progress and keeping track of audience reaction.  Whether you're interested in a high-level view or deep-dive data, the best way to set informed goals is to start with the numbers."

The gradual accumulation of services and data over the years has put Google in something of an untouchable position when it comes to online mapping, which is why when Apple tried to launch its own maps app for iOS devices last year it was so inaccurate and poorly received. "It was a complete disaster because the data they used was just not good enough - they just haven't spent the decades Google has spent just gathering geospatial data," says Brotton, who has worked alongside Google in the past.

"In two different tests, the NTM was asked to 1) learn to copy blocks of binary data and 2) learn to remember and sort lists of data. The results were compared with a more basic neural network, and it was found that the computer learned faster and produced longer blocks of data with fewer errors. Additionally, the computer's methods were found to be very similar to the code a human programmer would've written to make the computer complete such a task."

"This video helps students understand the reality of using today's Internet in terms of privacy. It explains how our actions online are tracked and used. It teaches: Why privacy online is different than it is in the real world How nearly everything we do online is documented and analyzed by companies Why our data is important to the success of online companies How our data enables websites to be free What we can do to understand how our data is being used and make choices to protect it."

"The unpopularity of personal data encryption isn't a problem in itself but a symptom of a bigger issue: The increasingly social, distributed and proscriptive nature of computing means that if you want to use the latest software and services you simply cannot keep your personal data to yourself."

"Whether you are a student or not, everyone is actively releasing and building collections of  data. We are, in a sense, walking end-users that are compiling personal databases, and as more information is generated, maintaining privacy in a big data world becomes even more crucial."