Students, families, colleges, and lawmakers need clearer information on postsecondary outcomes to make informed decisions. By leveraging data available at institutions and federal agencies, a nationwide student-level data network (SLDN) would close information gaps that persist in our higher education landscape to answer critical questions about…

In 2024, state legislators introduced hundreds of bills that would affect data collection, access, and use across early education, K-12, postsecondary, and the workforce. As in 2023, legislators continued to introduce and enact legislation governing cross-agency data systems. These policies are the most important step toward making statewide…

From Fall 2019 through Spring 2020, The Hunt Institute released a series of policy briefs, "Attainment for All: Postsecondary Pathways," that highlighted scalable state-level strategies to boost postsecondary attainment rates among specific student subpopulations including high school graduates, first-generation students, and adult…

Expanding access to high-quality, affordable early childhood services is key to state efforts to support families' well-being, ensure that children are ready to succeed in school, and sustain a strong economy. Right now, early childhood data is typically housed in different, disconnected state and local systems. State leaders seeking to provide…

For states to build statewide longitudinal data systems that empower people with access to information about education and workforce pathways, state leaders must consider the human capacity they already have, and must develop, to support this work. Building the human capacity required to manage, analyze, and protect data means investing in and…

Coaching has been widely implemented to support the delivery of evidence-based practices in schools. Although coaching is effective in rigorous research studies, scholars question the effective translation of coaching in authentic schools. Data systems that monitor the fidelity and impact of coaching offer one solution to address three…

In today's educational landscape, state and local educational agencies (SEAs and LEAs) often experience challenges connecting large-scale accountability data with actual school improvement initiatives. These challenges tend to be rooted in incoherent design and use of data systems for continuous improvement. As we aim to support SEAs in…

Active learning pedagogy has many documented benefits, and while several positive examples of its recent use in STEM classes have led to better performance, greater diversity, more equity, and improved retention of underrepresented student populations, more research in IS and IT classrooms is needed. Most active learning exercises are in a…

The Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) framework was developed in the 1990s and has been widely used as the most relevant and comprehensive leading principle for conducting analytics projects. Despite the wide acceptance and adoption of the CRISP-DM framework, the current business analytics discipline often focuses on the…

The 2020 election brought about legislative change across the country. New and veteran policymakers need information about the schools in their state. What programs are the most cost effective and work best for students? How can states attract and retain great teachers? What information do parents need to ensure that their kids are on track to…

In this article we discuss the use of RapidMiner, a data science software platform, in a Database Management Systems course. For further understanding of the database and the skill learned, students are given an assignment to complete, to not only use another software beside SQL Server Management Studio but also translate their findings in a more…

Organizations are keenly interested in employees trained in business analysis and robotic process automation. This is because those methods are growing in demand for improving efficiency in business processes. Business students exiting college must understand how to map out business processes and implement automation fundamentals to be competitive…

The "Forum Guide to Data Governance" highlights how data governance programs benefit education agencies and provide timely and useful best practices, examples, and resources for agencies implementing or updating their data governance programs. This resource is intended to address the needs of federal, state, and local agencies related…

This teaching case describes the functionality of a system employing IoT sensors to monitor part levels for a fictitious auto parts manufacturer. Data from the sensors are used to populate a centralized database and generate a dashboard for management. The system also generates tiered alerts to notify part runners and managers of pending part…

According to a continuously increasing amount of information in all aspects whether the sources are retrieved from an internal or external organization, a platform should be provided for the automation of whole processes in the collection, storage, and processing of Big Data. The tool for creating Big Data is a Big Data challenge. Furthermore, the…