Big Bad Data: How to Clean Up the Mess

Conference Archive

DevLearn 2014 Conference & Expo - October 31, 2014

Adam Weisblatt

Learning Strategist

Everyone’s talking about Big Data, but learning systems already generate piles of data and it’s a mess. How can we move on to a more in-depth analysis of learner behavior if we can’t even straighten out the basics? Our technicians roll their eyes and complain about poor data quality in the upstream feeds. The report designers complain that the stakeholders keep changing their requirements, and our teams are burning precious hours managing unwieldy Excel spreadsheets. We don’t need a new technology. We need a new approach.

In this session participants will examine a framework for understanding how to efficiently work with learning data. You will explore an overarching approach that you can use to communicate to both technical staff and business stakeholders. Using humor and visualization, this session will introduce you to techniques, tools, and concepts that are not usually thought of by database professionals outside of the learning industry.

In this session, you will learn:

How to clarify the business drivers for gathering data and use them to inform your strategy
To look at learning data holistically so that you can find solutions to data problems
To discover techniques to use existing data to generate the data needed for reporting
How to put data limitations into a perspective that business stakeholders understand
How to create low-effort, repeatable, and flexible processes for collecting, cleaning, and reporting on learning data

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Handouts

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