As an educator, you’re always looking for ways in which you can improve your work, and help your students succeed. One way that educators are working on this right now is with big data. With the application of data science, educators can spot patterns and help students get the most out of their time in class. Here are just a few ways that big data is being used in education right now.

Predicting Student Success

Making predictions of a student’s success has always been part of the educational process. However, it’s usually been done by a single educator, who’s human and therefore not always going to get it right. That’s where big data is coming in right now to make things easier, and more accurate.

“This can be done with machine learning” says tech writer Steve King, from Boom Essays and Essay Services. “The data on a student can be fed into a machine learning AI, and it can predict the results that the student will get at the end of their course.”

When you use an AI to do this, you can really fine tune it to get the answers that you’re looking for. You can see how a student is doing in any class, and work out where they may need additional help. When you have this information, you can really fine tune your teaching to help your students do their best.

Personalize Learning

If you’ve used machine learning AI to make predictions on a student’s success, you’ll be looking to adapt your teaching to help them succeed, as mentioned above. When you have this data, you can make more useful decisions when creating lesson plans.

As you know exactly where students are struggling, you can then make changes to your teaching to address this. It really helps you pinpoint exactly what the students are having problems with, and helps them get the most out of each and every class.

Categorizing Students

What does it mean to categorize students? When you have so much data on each student, you can get a real idea of how each student learns, and what they find useful. That means that you can then start sorting students into categories, depending on how they learn.

This is a way of really helping students excel while they’re learning, and really make the most of the time they have in the classroom. When you categorize them, you can adjust your learning style depending on the students you have in your classroom right now. When you’re teaching in a way that works for them, they’re much more likely to succeed.

Predict Future Careers

You’ve seen how machine learning can help predict future grades and identify areas where the student may be struggling. You’ll also see that it can go further than that, too. “You can use big data to help identify careers where your students could succeed” says Angela Downes, a big data expert at State of Writing and Paper Fellows. “That can help you and your students with their learning at your institution.”

When you student is given ideas on the careers they could flourish in, they’ll be more motivated while they’re learning. It also gives you more data on your student, so you can help them with their learning.

Help With Making Decisions

There are so many decisions that educators have to make every single day. It can be hard to make some of them, as you’re not sure whether they would be beneficial to the students themselves. That’s where big data can come in.

As you have so much data on your students, you’ll be able to use it to help make decisions. For example, if you’re thinking of using a specific teaching style in your classroom, you have the data on hand to see how your students learn. As you have this data, you’ll be able to see if that specific teaching style will work for your students.

There are lots of ways that big data is helping educators improve their work right now, and these are just a few examples. Big data is here to stay, and if you’re ready for it you can really use it to your advantage.

Author: Jenny Han is a writer with Academized and UK Writings. She covers big data in education. She’s also a blogger for OX Essays.