Oz uni banks on data to level up teaching and learning with Cloudera

Image courtesy of Deakin University

Australia-based higher education provider Deakin University is working with hybrid data firm Cloudera, going for a strategic data investment to become more data-driven and improve the teaching and learning experience for its 60,000 students.

Remaining future-proof in Australia’s highly competitive higher education market is mission critical for Deakin University. Modernising its data architecture not only strengthens its personalised learning pathways but heightens operational efficiencies. 

Using Cloudera Data Platform (CDP), Deakin’s IT teams can now ingest and process more than 8.8 million data events per day from disparate systems, including learning management, registrar, administration, and occupancy analytics.

The university also upgraded its learning management system with analytics that provide crucial insights into student learning patterns, providing real-time understanding of how to improve teaching and student learning outcomes. 

Teaching staff are also able to access various data sources via Deakin’s CDP learning analytics dashboard to provide more personalised and targeted support to students.

Faster access to usable data insights enables Deakin University to develop comprehensive profiles of student campus experiences and the many ways students interact with academic staff and learning materials. 

Armed with this knowledge of student learning patterns, university leadership, faculty, and staff are now empowered to deliver more engaging lessons aligned to learning preferences and future workplace needs.

Deakin University’s Chief Digital Officer Craig Warren said that CDP is giving the university crucial insights to improve its data collection and analysis strategy. 

“(We) partnered with Cloudera to capture and better understand key student data to realise the next phase of our digital transformation,” said Warren. “Providing improved and enhanced teaching and learning experiences is integral to our digital strategy and (CDP) helps us deliver this.”

He said the collaboration has not only generated significant value for current students but supports the university’s future plans to deliver data analytics capabilities to more departments.”    

Keir Garrett, VP at Cloudera Australia and New Zealand, said investing in a modern data infrastructure ensures that Deakin has the “data intelligence” to really understand the needs of today’s students while also anticipating how this might change in the future.