Big Data Gathering Can Predict

What Big Data Can Tell Us About the Psychology of Learning and Teaching

Big Data in Education: Pedagogy and Research

This book discusses how Big Data could be implemented in educational settings and research, using empirical data and suggesting both best practices and areas in which to invest future research and development. It also explores: 1) the use of learning analytics to improve learning and teaching; 2) the opportunities and challenges of learning analytics in education. As Big Data becomes a common part of the fabric of our world, education and research are challenged to use this data to improve educational and research systems, and also are tasked with teaching coming generations to deal with Big Data both effectively and ethically. The Big Data era is changing the data landscape for statistical analysis, the ways in which data is captured and presented, and the necessary level of statistical literacy to analyse and interpret data for future decision making. The advent of Big Data accentuates the need to enable citizens to develop statistical skills, thinking and reasoning needed for representing, integrating and exploring complex information. This book offers guidance to researchers who are seeking suitable topics to explore. It presents research into the skills needed by data practitioners (data analysts, data managers, statisticians, and data consumers, academics), and provides insights into the statistical skills, thinking and reasoning needed by educators and researchers in the future to work with Big Data. This book serves as a concise reference for policymakers, who must make critical decisions regarding funding and applications.

Ask, Measure, Learn

You can measure practically anything in the age of social media, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, collecting mountains of data won’t yield a grain of insight. This non-technical guide shows you how to extract significant business value from big data with Ask-Measure-Learn, a system that helps you ask the right questions, measure the right data, and then learn from the results. Authors Lutz Finger and Soumitra Dutta originally devised this system to help governments and NGOs sift through volumes of data. With this book, these two experts provide business managers and analysts with a high-level overview of the Ask-Measure-Learn system, and demonstrate specific ways to apply social media analytics to marketing, sales, public relations, and customer management, using examples and case studies.