Top 5 Interesting Big Data Applications in Education

Author: Rosario Rio

Improving Academic Outcomes for Students

Exams, projects, and assignments are the most popular ways of evaluating a student's overall performance. All of these grades, however, can be added together to reveal a distinct data trail left by the student throughout their lives.

If teachers examine these digital footprints, they will gain insight into pupils' actions and progress in the classroom. Big data allows for the tracking of behaviors like:

  • Their response time for each question
  • Resources they favor
  • Questions they don't attempt
  • Successfully addressed questions

Students will benefit greatly from the immediate analysis that will allow them to receive far more insightful criticism of their work. Results can be vastly enhanced thanks to the comments. Why? Because then they can see where they excel and where they need improvement.

Scores on standardized tests aren't the only measure of a student's progress. Education and big data come together to assist teachers to gauge how long their pupils take to complete an assignment. They are also able to pick up on the types of queries that students have problems with.

Enhanced Grading System

To better monitor student progress, many schools are turning to Big Data. This breakdown clarifies both individual and team performance.

Teachers will benefit from a deeper understanding of a student's interests thanks to data gleaned from a breakdown of their grades. Improvements can be made to the grading system so that the student's strengths are more prominently displayed. Because of this approach, educators will be better equipped to guide kids in making informed career decisions.

Socrative, Nearpod, and Classroom Monitor are just a few of the big data tools used for student analysis at the Ashford School in the United Kingdom. Through the use of these programs, educators can monitor pupils' actions and output in real-time.

The institute has improved its pupils' academic results and provided them with more effective pedagogical tools. When it comes to monitoring student progress, both individually and as a whole, big data in the classroom is invaluable.

The data collected in this way allows them to fine-tune solutions that ultimately help students advance in their chosen fields. Students can receive more helpful direction and more efficient study schedules through statistical analysis of their grades across disciplines.

Teachers are in a unique position to help students find fulfilling careers since they can assess their progress and interests in several topics. In addition, the use of big data in education allows educators to identify the elements influencing each student's performance and provide efficient remedies through analytics.

Drawing Student Interest

Getting a student's interest is a fascinating and important Big Data use case in the classroom. Inattentive pupils will exist in any classroom, no matter how engaging the lecturer is. However, a successful lecture requires attentive listeners.

Biometric data from students, such as their pulse rates, facial expressions, and objects touched during the lecture, are scheduled to be used by Big Data professionals. A camera mounted to the ceiling or a wearable gadget similar to a smartwatch might collect this data.

A student's level of focus can be determined by evaluating this information. With this information in hand, the educator can readjust the lesson plan accordingly.

Personalized Programs

Once teachers have a firm grasp on how long a kid's attention span is and how many grades they cover, they can design individualized lessons for each student.

Additionally, instructors can provide their students with a mixed learning experience that combines both online and traditional classroom settings. Online course materials and lectures are made available to students through individualized software.

Learning at your own pace is an option for them. With the advent of big data in education, institutions of higher learning are no longer limited in their ability to provide individualized curricula due to a large student body. Blended learning, which combines offline and online study, is used in the big data context for this purpose.

So, customers may choose the courses they want to take and move through them at their own pace, while still having access to offline support. Students will be able to consult with their instructors directly using these cutting-edge tools. MOOCs provide access to this type of integrated learning for students all over the world.

As an illustration, Andrew Ng's Machine Learning class at Stanford had over 400 students enrolled. On the other hand, over a hundred thousand people enrolled in this course when it was made available on the online learning platform Coursera.

In comparison to the Standard offline class, more students were able to understand the concepts and found the study material to be beneficial because of this.

Bringing Down The Dropout Rate

The use of Big Data in education has a secondary goal of reducing school and university dropout rates. Predictive analysis using big data can help us see how our pupils will do in the future. This evaluation will track students' progress over a school year to foresee who might be at risk of dropping out.

The administration of the educational institution will also benefit from conducting a scenario analysis on a proposed new course with the information gleaned from such an examination. Teachers will benefit greatly from being able to use this information to help their students choose the best academic path for them.

Dropout rates are expected to fall as student performance improves. Big data's widespread presence in the education sector facilitates the use of predictive analytics on all the data collected by educational institutions. Therefore, they can learn enough about how their students will do in the future. In addition to reducing the need for trial-and-error methods, these forecasts can facilitate the use of scenario analysis on a particular course before it is included in the curriculum.

Big data is also useful for monitoring graduates' success in the workforce. In the long run, this will help aspiring students make more informed decisions about their education.

Big data aids instructors in answering questions like:

  • How many students supplied late project submissions?
  • How is enrollment, and how does it stack up against enrollment in similar classes?
  • How high is the course failure rate?
  • How does the course withdrawal rate stack up against those of prior years?

These details are useful for educators in determining why students are leaving their programs. As a result, they are in a better position to aid students with writing assignments and other difficult aspects of the educational process. In addition, they can use big data to improve the course materials and make them more interesting to students.

Final Words

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