Big Data is changing the face of business around the world, but it’s also improving the lives of people outside the corporate sphere. One example of this can be found at Nottingham Trent University, where Big Data is used to help shape the student experience.

To take a closer look at this transformation, John Furrier and Dave Vellante of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s Media production team, joined Mike Day, director of information systems at Nottingham Trent University, at the HP Big Data 2015 conference. Mike Day is the Director of Information Systems at Nottingham Trent University.

The discussion opened with the question of how the University was using Big Data. Day explained that the school was looking at each student’s digital footprint to understand how the students engaged with their studies. Their major concern was using this information to help first-in-family students adjust to life at the University.

Changing campus culture

Data about the students has allowed the school to adopt a technique called “Flip Learning,” where homework is given out first and class time concentrates on the areas students find challenging. They can use the best of online and the best of real-world education to create a social conversation.

Day pointed out that they’ve shared the data with the students, leading the young scholars to adjust their efforts around the information. This was successful because the program was built with the help of a student committee to ensure the data was relevant to the student body.

Lessons in Big Data

Day mentioned that the University discovered many things about using Big Data through the project. Technology, he said, was the easy part. The real challenge, and the real success, was in working with people across the campus to make the project useful to everyone involved.

Going forward, the school plans to use this Big Data project as a beachhead from which they can move on to more community involvement. They’re especially interested in discovering from the community what kind of research would have the best real-world application.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the HP Big Data Conference 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE