Not-for-profit education technology provider Jisc has released a version of its data visualisation and analytics tool Heidi Plus for higher education organisations in Wales.
The Wales-specific version of the tool is designed to help planners within higher education providers understand how their performance compares with 29 national measures set by Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), with one dashboard for each measure and two overall scorecards.
The service has been partially funded by HEFCW and is available to purchase by those with a Heidi Plus subscription.
“We have lacked the ability to interrogate the data and metrics associated with Welsh Government HE policy in the same manner as we are able to for many English or UK-wide HE data and metrics,” said Mike Wilson, head of planning and student data at Bangor University.
“This has left a considerable gap in intelligence and insight that Welsh universities could benefit from when trying to develop a deeper understanding of these Wales-specific data and metrics, and particularly to understand how these metrics intersect with each other, and with other HE data.”
Two phases
The first phase of the Welsh service, focused on national measures and benchmarking, opened on 27 October. A second phase concerned with cross-border movement of students will be added in early February, at which point charging will be introduced.
The service joins other versions of Heidi Plus which provide performance measures for higher education across the UK. The system is accessed through Tableau Server, a business intelligence and analytics platform.
Jisc has previously built four Heidi Plus dashboards covering the impact of Covid-19, which are free to use by all subscribers.
Image of Aberystwyth University by Ray Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0
