Information Fluency as a Strategic Crucial
A Dialog with Ellen Wagner
It has been a long time since greater schooling leaders and analysts first alerted establishments a couple of “information tsunami” that may problem each infrastructure and tutorial applications. How would legacy information facilities sustain? And the way would curriculum in most disciplines, in addition to analysis and administration change?
We requested Ellen Wagner, predictive analytics reporting (PAR framework) pioneer, seasoned consultant to greater schooling, and maybe the final word digital studying activist, for a way of the place we have been on our information journey, and for a structured view of the info capabilities greater schooling establishments can foster for achievement.

Mary Grush: What was it prefer to be within the schooling information trenches “again within the day”?
Ellen Wagner: There have been many individuals, together with me, engaged in an intensive dialog about “huge information in schooling” — which was, notably, a nationwide pattern fueled considerably by the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis. The concept was to concentrate on scholar success and leverage the rising curiosity in huge information to discover how you can deal with retention, development, and completion issues. There have been perhaps 7 essential years — from about 2009 till 2016 or so — throughout which predictive analytics matured sufficient to not be seen as “the satan’s work” in schooling!
There have been perhaps 7 essential years — from about 2009 till 2016 or so — throughout which predictive analytics matured sufficient to not be seen as “the satan’s work” in schooling!
Grush: Clearly there have been many trials and discoveries through the years, however might you choose one lesson discovered in regards to the worth and position of information — one which was maybe an important?
Wagner: Positive. Information are the technique of attaining numerous ends, by way of evaluation and choice making. Being clear about what your ends are — and discovering the important data wanted to help the seek for solutions about how greatest to realize these ends — is what’s actually necessary.
Information are the technique of attaining numerous ends, by way of evaluation and choice making. Being clear about what your ends are — and discovering the important data wanted to help the seek for solutions about how greatest to realize these ends — is what’s actually necessary.
We obtained insights from exploring information patterns; we evaluated the tenability of our hypotheses. We examined our assertions again and again to make sure that tenability. However then, we nonetheless wanted to determine what we have been going to do, truly, with the knowledge we discovered, when it comes to supporting college students higher.
So, it ended up not likely being ‘all in regards to the information’ — or having the ‘most’ information…
Grush: …It is about readability.
Wagner: Sure.
Grush: And to deliver up a extra present problem related to our information insurance policies and practices, as we speak we regularly hear a plaintive cry in greater schooling, particularly in educational circles: “Am I dropping my professional standing to AI?”
Is that this a priority we’ll at some point resolve?
Wagner: I do suppose that an important query on folks’s minds nowadays revolves across the accuracy and efficacy of scholar efficiency information together with the position that AI is and/or is not going to play in figuring this out for establishments.
An important query on folks’s minds nowadays revolves across the accuracy and efficacy of scholar efficiency information together with the position that AI is and/or is not going to play in figuring this out for establishments.