This is something of a bumper post on recent developments in Analytics Labs.
We have news on:
- Analytics Labs activity – outgoing and incoming teams and upcoming recruitment activity.
- An opportunity for previous Labs participants to join our new Alumni group.
Outgoing Analytics Labs teams
We had a very successful Showcase event in Manchester in October at which Analytics Labs teams demonstrated their proof of concept dashboards on the following areas:
- International competitiveness – covering student recruitment, staff recruitment and retention and international league tables.
- The Research Excellence Framework (REF) – a tracking tool covering REF2014 benchmarking, the research environment and REF 2021 preparation insights.
- Student residences and Estates – including explorations of regional and characteristic variations in where students live, commuting patterns and accommodation trends.
- The Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) – the team worked together with Research England on exploring KEF metrics themselves and how insights could be gained from their use.
- Learning Analytics – exploring the potential for BI in this big data area.
- Diversity – includes exploration of equality accreditation including Stonewall and Gender Pay Gap, Athena Swan, Race Equality Charter.
- Finance – looking at financial sustainability and a range of financial health measures.
- Learning Analytics – building on previous work – continuation of existing use of big data for student engagement benchmarking and insights.
- Well-being – an important area that has increasingly wide interest. Potential outputs may include tools to assist resource planning and overall impact measurement.
- Professional Teaching Qualifications Lab. Explorations into teaching qualifications amongst the HE staff workforce with related trends and associated benchmarking.
- Welsh Insights Lab. Explorations into the factors of most interest to Welsh Higher Education Providers.
- Two Research Labs:
- Research Lab 1 will consider:
- What are the downstream effects of particular tranches of research funding, from research activities and collaborations, through outputs and their reach and use, to research outcomes, impact and the contribution of research to wider economic and social change? We understand this is a difficult and long-standing question, and we are looking for novel sources and uses of data to address it in new ways.
- Research Lab 2 will consider:
- Q1: What factors affect how research practices, that are intended to protect against bias in experimental research, are reported? The theme would explore practices including randomisation of samples, blinding, allocation concealment, sample design, specification of primary outcome. Factors might include sub-discipline, research funders and their policies, and/or the journal policy with respect to the use of reporting guidelines.
- Q2: Given the current UK Government’s ambition for investment in Research and Development to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027, what factors correlate with increases in business investment in R+D in collaboration with universities?
The proof of concept dashboards were very warmly received by an audience of 100 peers and experts. We will be taking the feedback from the day and the proofs of concept and giving consideration to how they may be taken forward.
Incoming Analytics Labs teams
We also had a number of teams starting their Analytics Labs journey on the same day. These teams are exploring the following themes:
The teams are hard at work and will report back to a Showcase event on 6 February.
Upcoming Analytics Labs teams – we’re recruiting
We have a new cohort of Analytics Labs running from 6 February 2019 – w/c 13 May 2019.
We’re recruiting to the following themes:
and
We’re looking for team analysts with interest and experience in the themes alongside Tableau and/or Alteryx (or related) experience. We’re also looking for suitably experienced team leaders/product owners to lead the themes.
Check out or post on Analytics Labs, its benefits and how to get involved.
Interested? We’re taking applications using this application form.
Analytics Labs Alumni
We know from feedback that the friendships and networks forged during the Analytics Labs experience have continued beyond the three months of Labs activity. Having spoken to a number of past participants we knew that there was some demand for providing a platform on which past participants could keep in touch – with each other and with developments within the Labs service itself.
We’re delighted to say that we have launched an Analytics Labs Alumni group. Initial membership numbers are very encouraging with over 100 on board, but of course we’d love to have more of you involved. So, if you have previously been an Analytics Labs/Heidi Labs or equivalent participant and would like to join us then please email us and we’ll be in touch.
Further details can be found in this blog post.
Coming Soon
We’ve some exciting dashboard suites for release in early 2019. Watch this space!