Some in our discipline have recently voiced the opinion that political science is a data science. What follows from this argument is that we as instructors are training the next generation of data scientists, especially professionals and researchers who will work with big data. This paper explores the implications for political science education,…

Student data is an invaluable asset for driving educational success, yet it comes with significant responsibility. As states explore ways to enhance data privacy protections, they must strike a balance between safeguarding sensitive information and leveraging data for student success. This brief examines the best practices in student data privacy…

In today's data-sharing paradigm, personal data has become a valuable resource that intensifies the risk of unauthorized access and data breach. Increased data mining techniques used to analyze big data have posed significant risks to data security and privacy. Consequently, data breaches are a significant threat to individual privacy. Privacy is…

The Association of Public & Land-grant Universities (APLU) launched the "Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success" initiative in the fall of 2018. The South Eastern Cluster brought together a diverse set of institutions from this region of the country that included several of the larger universities, the North Carolina System…

Though we have recently witnessed the "exponential production of digital data to measure, analyze, and predict educational performance" (Salajan & Jules, this volume), there has not been sufficient attention given to the quantitative methods that are used to process and transform this data in order to arrive at findings related to…

Data are becoming increasingly important in science and society, and thus data literacy is a vital asset to students as they prepare for careers in and outside science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and go on to lead productive lives. In this paper, we discuss why the strongest learning experiences surrounding data literacy may arise…

Beginning in 1906, the teachers who developed the profession of school social work conducted home visits to bridge communication between the school and home. In the more than 100 years that the profession has continued, home visiting has remained a cornerstone. Despite its continued importance, there remains a lack of comprehensive instruction on…

Although an increasing number of ethical data science and AI courses is available, with many focusing specifically on technology and computer ethics, pedagogical approaches employed in these courses rely exclusively on texts rather than on algorithmic development or data analysis. In this paper we recount a recent experience in developing and…

This article explores the many ways in which states can and are addressing racial equity in problem solving and policymaking. The authors explore national data that make the case for addressing bias and advancing equity in state policy; share strategies and best practices for engaging families and communities; and provide examples of policies that…

Programmatic advertising has come to dominate the landscape of digital media planning. To prepare ad majors for their future careers in the industry, it is essential to teach students programmatic buying and provide them with hands-on experience. In this article, the authors present their approach of integrating teaching programmatic buying into a…

Analytics is getting a great deal of attention in both industrial and academic venues. Organizations of all types are becoming more serious about transforming data from a variety of sources into insight, and analytics is the key to that transformation. Academic institutions are rapidly responding to the demand for analytics talent, with hundreds…

This chapter explores lessons learned from two different learning analytics efforts at a large, public, multicampus university--one internally developed and one vended platform. It raises questions about how to best use analytics to support students while keeping students responsible for their own learning and success.

This report investigates communication and data sharing between K-12 and community colleges to identify best practices. This wide-ranging topic encompassed many efforts that impact student recruitment, retention and success in their postsecondary education. To prioritize the most pressing issues, this report focuses on recent system-wide findings…

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the best practice of using "big data" reports to help distance learning administrators better understand their own programs and represent them to stakeholders. The authors examine five reports: (1) the number and percentage of graduates from the main campus who also take classes at the…

Introduction: The term "information" in information science does not share the characteristics of those of a nomenclature: it does not bear a generally accepted definition and it does not serve as the bases and assumptions for research studies. As the data deluge has arrived, is the concept of information still relevant for information…