A Gartner study reveals that student success is the biggest driving factor for education IT after CIOs aligned their IT investments according to their understanding of business trends and education.

“Student success and the reinvention of academic credits top the list of business trends that currently influencing education, according to a recent report from analyst Gartner,” according to Dian Schaffhauser of THEJournal.

“In ‘Top 10 Business Trends Impacting Education in 2015,’ the company advised CIOs to understand the impact that business trends are having on education in order to address them early and to align their IT investments with those trends that ‘have the most relevance’ for their institutional strategies.”

While “Reinventing Credits,” would suggest higher education, the number one concern shows that troubleshooting student problems drives companies. They first need to get to the bottom of the problem and that takes a lot of data analysis. If there are holes or challenges in receiving data to address it, then IT needs to be heightened and adjusted to the task.

“Schools are increasingly concerned about determining how best to respond when a student appears to be at risk of failing,” reported Schaffhauser.

“No more ‘sink or swim,’ noted the authors. Data conundrums heighten the challenge of getting a handle on student success. On one hand, data related to student engagement may exist in different systems that aren't easily integrated or standardized; on the other hand, education leaders need to balance concerns about student privacy against affordable and ‘reliable’ methods used to collect and use student data. On top of that it isn't easy to analyze or interpret the data accurately.

There are many pieces that need to be added in order to complete the puzzle of properly collecting and analyzing student data.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor.