You may be wondering, what exactly is institutional research at Penn State? The OPAIR office is undoubtedly known for capturing data in its charts and dashboards; and while these projects are critical to the valuable work that we do, there are many more ways we share information.
Ultimately, we work together to provide accurate, meaningful data that empower the Penn State community – and beyond – to make informed decisions that affect all of us and support a data-informed decision-making culture at the University.
As Penn State’s true source of data, it’s essential that we address ways in which we communicate out, both internally and beyond our walls. We do this by creating individual processes that meet people where they are. Consideration is given to each audience, because it is our responsibility to deliver precise, relevant, and timely data to those who need it, in the format the best works for them. For instance, will raw data suffice? Do they require an interactive report or perhaps a static report that goes into greater detail?
As a unified team, OPAIR’s data management, data science and analytics, and institutional research (IR) groups are at the heart of this process, working together to align data, strategy and technology in the delivery of valuable data, providing insights and analysis to the University community.
With data management as the foundation of this triad, this group brings institutional data together from multiple source systems to support institutional data research, analysis, and reporting. It provides the data structure, views, and models to prepare the data to be analyzed and support analysts using a range of tools and services.
Next, data science and analytics utilizes the data provided by data management and operations to create dashboard reports and complete analyses. The group’s focus is to maximize the power of that institutional data by using predictive models and advanced analyses to inform the aforementioned data-driven decision making at the University. To do this, the team utilizes data available at the University to predict and forecast future outcomes. The team distributes the data using data visualizations and dashboards, making it easy to share and view insights.
OPAIR’s institutional research group then digs deeper into the data to create specialized static reports. In addition to collaboration on research related to institutional data, the group responds to both internal and external data requests and reports to federal, state, and local mandated reports. The IR group uses information from across the University and from other institutions to solve problems.
The OPAIR team recently provided in-depth student credit hour information to University leadership in support of Penn State’s new data-driven budget allocation model. The model has determined the amount of funding — primarily from tuition and state funding — that Penn State provides to colleges, campuses, and administrative and student support units, and complements the University’s multi-pronged approach to reduce costs, identify efficiencies and enhance revenues and will help the University balance its budget by 2025.
The team is also continuing its work to provide customized analysis of consistent institutional data via the development of a new reporting and data analytics resource SharePoint site, OPAIR-RADAR. The site will serve as a central resource combining information from the OPAIR website, iTwo, and the Institutional Data Repository (IDR) on-premise data storage that uses existing servers and machines to create the IDR database.
Student credit hours are scheduled to be available in iTwo in late-April. Any questions may be forwarded to Kim Marchek, senior institutional research associate.