Anybody There? Leveraging Wireless Data to Solve Real-World Problems

Building on our goal of bringing big data to the forefront at Tufts, we are leveraging new sources of data and unique methods of analysis to attempt to answer a variety of questions being asked by university leadership. While our natural instinct is to solve IT problems, Tufts Technology Services is improving student success by answering questions that relate to student trends such as intercampus travel patterns, room scheduling, and optimization. Leveraging data points resident in the campus wireless logs, executives can now get objective data en masse where traditional methods used in the past were either subjective or lacked an appropriate sample size.

Outcomes: Learn to think outside the box about how IT data can benefit institutional initiatives at the highest level * Think about how to approach individuals about determining the "value" of data, which is tied to core competences an IT organization can offer * Learn how to sell the data story