In our yearly recaps posted Recap: Year 1 and Recap: Year 2, we discussed several of the technological successes of IRDS and BSU. In this year three recap, we add in the relationships we have been building around campus. But first, we did implement two new important data product categories in year three.

Workforce Insights

In year three we completed the implementation of a new module from Heliocampus. It is called Workforce Insights and greatly expands our ability to do analysis and analytics on faculty and staff trend data. In addition, this process produces what we call extracts. These extracts are analysis-ready files that are generated using source system data and transported via an ETL process into our data warehouse to support analysis and analytics. In this way, we leverage not only the delivered reports that come with Workforce Insights, but we can also create custom reporting environments tailored to the needs of BSU.

BSU Analytics 

Over time we have added several new home-grown BSU dashboards to the suite of dashboards available to Tableau users. These dashboards have been developed with our campus partners and cover a range of university data. This includes: strategic planning, admissions and financial aid data, admitted students, advisor caseloads, college transitions, curricula served, Navigate analysis, and more. Due to the expansion of the number of available dashboards, we are currently developing a Tableau landing page (being developed by Naveed Syed, Business Intelligence Analyst) that will make it possible to see all the dashboards users have access to and, perhaps more importantly, those they don’t have access to and would like to request access.

We are committed to working with campus partners to form synergistic efforts that benefit multiple stakeholders. The following are the current initiatives and a brief description

 

Graduate Assistants and Interns

IRDS redeveloped the internship program that had fallen away from the office some time ago. We have been taking on interns from the Graduate Certificate Program in Institutional Research at BSU for the last couple of years. Interns from the program get real-world experience in a fast-paced IRDS operation. We also have a graduate assistant position that is currently managing our web presence, including Data Insider!

Explorer Program

Several departments across BSU have their own analysis and analytics capabilities. Our Explorer Program is meant to leverage those resources for the benefit of those departments, IRDS, and BSU more generally. The Explorers are given privileged levels of access to our data warehouse, targeted training, and the ability to create new dashboards in our Tableau environment. In the process of creating new dashboards, we ask the team to also help us validate fields that can then be used by everyone. This win-win program is a great way to expand our bandwidth while also allowing departments outside IRDS to leverage the data warehouse.

Working on New or Updated Data Sources

Over time, we are consistently adding or updating data sources. This includes things like admissions data from Slate and student support data from EAB’s Navigate. These areas of focus are developed, and we work consistently with our colleagues in various offices to continue to refine the data sources and the ETL processes that bring that data from source systems to the data warehouse. Though this is a challenging and labor-intensive process, it is critical to the long-term success of analytics at BSU.

Data Liaisons

This group is for users who are data-savvy but not quite as intensive as the Explorer Program. Data liaisons are asked to be point people for their department (both administrative and academic) when it comes to interfacing with IRDS and the data products we have made available to the campus. Liaisons work with us to understand the types of data we have available and the level of effort to produce new data (low, medium, hard), as well as the most important development of existing data needs.

Tableau Users Group

This is a large monthly meeting where we call together all our Tableau users (currently about 240 users). This meeting is led by Cole Heady and covers topics related to data governance, data literacy, the data warehouse, and related topics.

Data Literacy Institute and Advisory Groups

By the end of the Spring 2025 term, we will have had about 60 staff members complete the Data Literacy Institute, offered in partnership with the Association for Institutional Research. This has been an excellent and intensive training for these staff members. As a way to keep that momentum going, we have formed these groups into Advisory Groups. Those Advisory Groups work with Institutional Research, Joseph Finke in particular, to extend and formalize the research projects that were started as part of the DLI.

MIDAS Data Management Committee

MIDAS is the premier group for data management at BSU. The following two groups are extensions of MIDAS:

Data Governance Subcommittee

This committee is largely responsible for the process of defining and approving business term definitions and report specifications. They provide advisory guidance to MIDAS, where final approvals of these things are decided. The work of this committee has been greatly enhanced by the addition of Caleb Grubb, Decision Support Assistant, in the office of Decision Support.

Survey Committee

Also empowered by MIDAS, this group meets monthly to discuss the coordination of surveys at BSU and the development of policies around the survey process.

The full membership of MIDAS, and related information, can be found here: MIDAS Steering Committee

In addition to the above, we will continue to further refine and operationalize our data science models. We are currently working on a model that will provide early risk indicators. We must first figure out how to import data from Canvas, as that is the earliest and most high-frequency data we have. Also, there is no shortage of requests to expand our data models, create more visualizations, and better support decisions across the institution. As we work with more folks across campus, as our own skills improve, and as the data warehouse expands, we expect to be able to serve those needs better and better over time.

A Look Ahead

Though predictions for the future don’t always come true, here are some of the additional, bigger-picture items we’ll be trying to add in year 4:

• Initiate a Dean’s Workshop on a 2x per year cadence
• Create Data Stories that use a storytelling format in data analysis, starting with section density and course consolidation candidates.
• Complete a first pass of the 15 to Finish dashboard (including Navigate integration) with University College
• Move more of our specifications and business definitions from drafting to approved. Tag more of our dashboards with the Data Rating System
• Roll as-of-day reporting for the admissions funnel.
• Lastly, though it sometimes flies under the radar, continue to execute on our other ongoing projects, incoming tasks and required reporting (this is about 90%+ of our time, we’re generally at capacity).