Big Data and Higher Education [Infographic]

More than 6.7 million students took an online course in 2011…were you one of them? Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches External link , a new book from the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Education and Skills, says that at scale, higher education’s migration to online will redefine what it means to provide a great education to students.

The availability of user interaction data is a game changer in online education. By measuring the time a student spends on a module or question, professors can assess how well an assignment performs for any one subgroup of students and identify areas of difficulty for a class or individual learner. Technology-focused degrees like data science programs take place on the web itself, allowing graduates to gain a comfort level with the space they will be working in every day. This ability to improve the student learning experience in real-time is unprecedented in the higher education field.

In this infographic, datascience@berkeley and the Global Agenda Council have teamed up to paint a picture of the higher education online landscape — including the benefits of online education, inherent barriers, and key players in the space today. The confluence of big data and higher education represents a permanent change to the learning landscape, one from which students, faculty, and entire areas of study will benefit. Take a moment to learn a little more about this academic revolution.