“Hi Sarah. It looks like you’ve attended three or more extracurricular events recently. GREAT! Did you know that students who attend 4 or more events tend to do better in class and stay in school?”
“Hi John. Here’s your iNutrient Report for this last week! Based on the meals you’ve purchased on campus, you’ve stayed within the calorie range you set. Great job! :)”
Texts like these from a computer hooked up to a database aren’t a reality—yet. But these messages aren’t far away, and neither is the hive mind of integrated data that has to precede them.
The University of Oregon’s Division of Student Life is building a system that will connect and integrate all data gathered at the university and use it to make better students.
That means in the future, UO could create a system that improves your GPA, helps you get a job after graduation or sees you skipping classes and stages an intervention before you even know you’re going to drop out. But a student will remain anonymous because individual data won’t be directly attached to any names, the university says. The foundation of this all-knowing system is launching this fall.
The UO’s  IQ is about to jump. Here’s how:
Data silos
UO’s data landscape right now is a collection of data silos. The Career Center collects job postings and results from graduates on whether or not they’ve started their careers. The Registrar has information on which students stay in school and which drop out. Institutional research has info on student engagement. These and many other departments are all collecting data, but keeping it mostly to themselves.
That’s about to change.
UO is working to connect these data silos into a database it can use and answer questions with, according to Stan Dura, director of Student Life assessment and research. Dura is leading the big data charge at UO.
But UO isn’t alone in this. Universities across the country are working to find a way to answer burning questions about why students stay in school, what makes them stay in school and why they get jobs after graduation.
“Data has become more shared,” said Pamelyn Shefman, director of research and assessment at University of Houston. “All the cogs are more collaborative.”
The Data Machine
Wake up 10 minutes before class and decide to skip. Head to the rec center instead, and afterward grab lunch at Carson. Your friends: “Hey, are you going to The Maze Runner? It’s a free Ducks After Dark thing.” You: “Yeah, after my Spanish conversation group.”
A day like this in the future at UO will be full of digital “pings,” and they’ll all be tied to your student ID number, according to Dura. Whenever you swipe your card or enter your 9-digit number, what you do or don’t do will go into the system.
This means a myriad of things.
It means that if you skip class several times in the first few weeks of the term, the system could see that and alert advisors, who might then reach out and ask what’s going on.
It means that if you complete an internship, it would go into a portfolio you could show to firms looking to hire.
The infrastructure for this change is nearly here. Card-swiping at events is coming this fall, according to Robin Holmes, vice president for Student Life, and the back-end programming for the database is already developed.
What’s perhaps an even bigger deal is what UO can figure out with the data.
Better living through big data
Big data would also help staff answer questions about the students they’re serving. Students from more and more diverse backgrounds are coming to the UO, and their struggles are more acute, according to Paula Staight, director of Health Promotion at UO. In 2014, 35 percent of students said they dropped a class due to stress.
“We all have our ‘we want to know this, we want to know that,’” Staight said.
Staff working at a university could use big data for smarter student support services, Shefman said. When staff members come into a university as new hires, they spend a lot of time getting to know their students.
But student trends change. Staff and support would be able to see trends, like an overabundance of law students going into counseling services or an absence of one ethnic group at events thrown for students, and change what they’re doing to help those groups.
Opting out of the system
Big data is a “two-edged sword,” computer science student Anders Stadum said.
Stadum is a leader in the UO Security Club that focuses on cybersecurity, and while he believes anyone should be able to keep their personal information from being displayed, signing up as a student is agreeing to give some of your privacy away.
And there’s always the possibility that UO could benefit from data mining.
“At each stage, there’s money to be made,” Stadum said. “That’s where the ethical battle lies with privacy. Can people use my information to make money without giving any back to me?”
But since students are already giving so much data away daily, this isn’t an issue, Dura said.
“They’re swiping in the residence halls, they’re swiping at the fitness center, they’re swiping at eating places, their smartphones are tracking all kinds of things. They’re signing in where they are on Facebook, and Twitter and Foursquare,” Dura said.
As far as money goes, Dura admits that he’s a “big-business skeptic” the same as Stadum, but it’s different with the university. Money the university makes with this data will go back into serving students, Dura said.
So what about students that want to opt out?
In his research for this project, Dura polled 83 students. About 85 percent were in favor, and the other 15 percent said yes, but that the student should be able to opt out.
Then Dura described to the students a situation where a senior realizes that he wants a record of all the workshops and professional development seminars he’s been to, but since he opted out, he can’t access that. Dura said that after describing this, nearly all of the students were for it, with the caveat that Student Life would need to tell students why they’re collecting the data.
“You have to collect it,” Dura said. “Otherwise, you’re disadvantaging the students when they’re not necessarily aware enough or knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision about it.”
Starting this fall, all UO students are “strongly encouraged” to swipe at events.
Dr. Kyu Ho Youm is world-renowned for his work in media law, which he teaches at the UO. He advises a cautious approach to this issue — that students need to be asked before their data can be used.
“If all that info is in one place, it’s more likely to be abused,” Youm said. “We should err on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt toward data protection.”
Youm doesn’t believe UO would abuse students’ data, but the problem is that students can’t know how their data is being used. Youm questions whether or not big data is the best way to get the information the UO wants.
“Technology is overrunning our own understanding of our privacy issues,” Youm said.