The Chronicle of Higher Education argues that if “data-driven teaching is the future of higher education, traditional universities are at a disadvantage” compared to online institutions. Professors at research universities specifically, “face less pressure to use technology to measure and modify the classroom experiences they are delivering to students.” The article profiles how the University of Michigan is using an educational technology, LectureTools, that is designed to collect data on how students are reacting to lectures. However, the question of whether such tools are making professors more effective “can be answered only one classroom at a time.” The Chronicle reports that Michigan has also created a task force to provide a series of grants that will “offer as much as $3-million to professors who propose large-scale changes to instruction and/or infrastructure that enable their colleagues to implement new learning approaches for sustainable and replicable adoption.”
http://chronicle.com/article/Can-Colleges-Use-Data-to-Fix/148307/