Author: Mike Sharkey

After the 2014 U.S. Midterm elections, the Daily Show aired a piece about how the elections looked in comparison to past results.  While observing how comments of the Democratic Party being in a shambles mirrored comments about the Republicans in 2012, Jon Stewart makes an aside remark about context: That joke was brought to you by context.  Context...look at how silly the world would be without context. This kind of biting sarcasm is a hallmark of the Daily Show, but it tends to be missing from higher education discussions (except on Twitter, of course).  The biggest bone I have to pick about the lack of context in higher ed has to do with student segmentation. To put it simply, there is no uniform definition of "a college student".  Now this may be…

I'm going to do that thing where as a parent, I use something my kids do in order to make a point.  Since I have twin 12-year old identical girls, the topic of responsibility comes up a lot. My kid reference is about Nose Goes and a typical event looks like something this: 1) Dad kindly asks girls to clean their room 2) Girls play Nose Goes...both touch their noses at the same time and then stare at each other 3) Nobody cleans the room The takeaway is that I made the mistake of inferring that BOTH of the girls are responsible for cleaning their room.  This brings up the concept of responsibility vs. accountability.  Here's the context that I'm using for those two words.  'Responsible' means that the person or persons…

Yuck. I really don't like that phrase. I get it...especially in certain cases. Facebook gives users access to a free and (somewhat) valuable tool, so they have every right to use the data as they see fit (within ethical limits, of course). Where there is a reasonable expectation set between the user and the company about who does what with the data, there are definitely cases where companies can "monetize the data". But in educational technology? Nope. I think that's where companies really start to skirt the line. I've got a fair bit of involvement in the ed tech space. I've started my own analytics company, I network and partner with many technology companies, and I have advised other ed tech businesses. What I don't see is a model where…

Jim Ritchey at Delta Initiative posted a nice item about early alerts in Higher Ed.   I think he's spot in as to the questions and issues he raises. To that end, I wanted to break down his post and respond from Blue Canary's perspective.  Blue Canary has recently launched Lighthouse -- our early alert retention solution.  Read on for some insights: [line] "One solution component where it is difficult to evaluate benefits is early alert systems" Difficult, but not impossible.  It's hard to measure the benefits, but if you are adopting a solution, your vendor ought to be willing to work with you to show evidence of success [line] "Organizations are learning that how the score is calculated and what data the calculation uses is critical to effectively matching…

I dig infomercials.  Whether it's Tony Little, Billy Mays (R.I.P.), the Sham Wow guy, or the Godfather -- Ron Popeil, I've always been intrigued by their unabashed shamelessness in the face of overt consumerism.  As I think back to the great infomercials of the past, though, I draw a strong parallel between what these pitchmen/women do and what we do in the data & visualization space.  That parallel is around simplicity. The good infomercials realize that there needs to be a concise takeaway from the product demonstration: Ginsu knife: can cut a tin can and a tomato Matthew Lesko: the government is giving away free money Veg-o-Matic: it slices, it dices, it juliennes   Nevermind the veracity of the statements (or the relevance...how often does one need to julienne vegetables?).…