IDA+A Products & Services

Institutional Data Analytics + Assessment offers services to the campus community for little to no cost. The table below describes the different areas of IDA+A and what types of services are available. To request our services, please submit a project request.

If you have additional questions prior to submitting the form, contact idata@purdue.edu.  

More information is also available on IDA+A’s FAQs page. 

The analytics team performs research, statistical analysis, reporting, and generates insights in support of data driven decision making and transparency.

Team Role and Book of Business 

  • Support Information Needs 
    • Dedicated resource for Provosts, President, Board of Trustees, and Purdue Online, fulfilling ad-hoc requests, supporting ongoing initiatives, and investigating new opportunities
    • Mandated Reporting (e.g., IPEDS, ICHE) and Data Exchange Reporting (e.g., AAUDE, CSRDE, AAUP, CDS)
    • Data Transparency for Public Consumption (e.g., Data Digest)
    • Ad Hoc needs of the data community
    • Serve as the student data subject matter experts, including financial aid and Bursar.
  • Deliver 
    • Assemble (Data Handling: clean, transform, create, blend)
      • Datasets supporting reports and dashboards
      • Datasets for stakeholders
        • For or from emerging systems not supported by enterprise tools (e.g., Brightspace/D2L, Boiler Connect, Academic Analytics) 
        • Anonymized data for IRB approved research projects 
        • Assessment projects and surveys 
    • Analyze
      • Apply descriptive, summary statistics 
      • Conduct statistical analysis (typically regression, ANOVA, HLM) 
      • Peer Comparisons typically utilizing AAUDE, IPEDS, National Rankings, or external data sources 
    • Interpret
      • Discuss needs and results with stakeholders 
      • Provide narratives answering questions 
      • Provide context when data differs from expected or historic 
    • Report
      • Self Service Reports (Cognos: Brightspace, Purdue Online) 
      • Dashboards (Tableau: Data Digest; Management Dashboards, Athletics, Survey Calendar, Purdue Online, CCO First Destination)
      • Data visualizations 
  • Educate 
    • Contribute content to data training programs 
    • Author and revise metadata: data definitions and specifications 
    • Foster relationships with data professionals (e.g.,  Data Managers, Financial Planning & Analysis, Human Resources, Business Intelligence Competency Center, Regional IR Offices – Purdue Global, Purdue NorthWest, Purdue Fort Wayne) and data consumers (e.g., Purdue Online, Teaching & Learning, Teaching & Learning Technologies, Student Success, Advising, Athletics, Admissions, Registrar, Bursar, Financial Aid, Graduate Students & Postdoctoral Scholars)
  • Explore/Community 
    • Data Quality
      • Support BI Upgrade Testing 
      • Provide Validation for Freeze Events 
      • Testing for new data sources (e.g., Brightspace) 
      • Review, validate analytical work product 
    • Lead and participate in core teams supporting emerging data needs for strategic initiatives (e.g., Purdue Moves: Transformative Education 2.0, Equity Task Force)

The assessment team helps campus partners design and implement a variety of rigorous measures on learning, success, and development to ensure continuous improvement. 

Team Role and Book of Business 

The essential roles of the Assessment team are the following: 

  • Facilitator 
  • Investigator 
  • Integrator 
  • Reporter 
  • Expert in inquiry methods, measurement, and theories in higher education 

The essential duties of any member of the Assessment team are the following: 

  • Planning for assessment and evaluation (i.e., logistics) 
  • Aligning assessment or evaluation questions with data needs 
  • Reporting findings (working in consultation with other IDA+A team members on anything that extends beyond descriptive analysis of data) 
  • Ensuring findings are immediately useful and informative 
  • Collaborating with internal and external partners on all of the above 

The Assessment team’s portfolio of work falls under the following, four, main areas: 

  • Assessing and measuring learning and development 
  • Building a culture for continuous improvement 
  • Programmatic or curricular evaluations 
  • Improving processes or methods for doing any of the above at Purdue. 

The Assessment team focuses on supporting decision-makers at Purdue that need to make evidence informed decisions related to teaching/learning and engagement.

The data engineering team oversees the infrastructure of Purdue’s Data Analytics Platform (PDAP) and automates the integration of data from various sources into the platform, facilitating downstream analysis and research.

Team Role and Book of Business 

  • Data Lake Infrastructure Management 
    • Architecture design and implementation 
    • Greenplum Account Management 
    • Partner with IT Infrastructure teams on topics including database and operating system upgrades, patches, backups and restores  
    • Tableau-Greenplum data integration to support Tableau dashboards 
  • ETL Process Design  
    • Design and write code in various programming languages to: 
      • Extract data from multiple data sources 
      • Transform data according to data science and analytics requirements 
      • Load data into the Greenplum database 
    • Greenplum-Informatica integration
  • Data Flow Automation 
    • Design and maintain workflows in the automation tool Automic UC4 to automate ETL processes and data flows 
    • Respond to automation errors
  • Faculty Research Support 
    • Manage the faculty research server Zeus, which supports advanced machine learning research 
    • Provide curated data sets to faculty, postdoctoral and graduate student researchers for IRB approved research projects
  • Data Security and Compliance 
    • Partner with IT Security teams on data security in the Greenplum environment 
    • Enforce data compliance requirements like FERPA and GLBA in the Greenplum environment 
    • Partner with the IRB data owners and data stewards on data sharing agreements 
  • Log Aggregation
    • Aggregate logs from multiple sources, facilitating log analytics for many applications

The Data Governance Team supports the university’s data strategy by promoting effective data management, fostering collaboration, providing training, and administering tools, systems, and processes that ensure data is accurate, accessible, and well-governed.

Team Role and Book of Business 

  • Administer and support Data Cookbook metadata software. Enterprise source of data elements, standard reports and dashboards. Historical record of data fields. Versions indicate how conceptual definitions became understood.
  • Lead and/or participate in enterprise data committees
  • Participate in projects to provide data governance expertise
  • IDA+A communication needs
  • Ad hoc communication needs for data-related Office of the Provost projects
  • Coordination of Executive Data Council
  • Creation of data governance process, procedure, best practices
  • Partnerships with other university areas (IT security, BICC, etc.)  to maintain effective data management practices
  • System administration for Elements faculty reporting tool
  • Oversight of IDA+A’s ticketing application, TDX
  • Development of web applications for unique data projects
  • Maintain IDA+A website
  • Development of training materials for major projects, new software, etc.
  • Oversight of faculty data curation project

The Data Science team serves as internal consultants that provide the means for Purdue units to change, optimize, and augment their operations using non-traditional data sources and artificial intelligence.

Team Role and Book of Business 

  • Administrative Operations
    • Energy & Utilities
    • Space Utilization
  • Student Life
    • Starrez & CBORD Reporting
    • Dining Forecasts
    • Housing Cancellations
    • Student Organization Recommender
    • Wellbeing
  • Enrollment Management
    • Curricular Analytics
    • Graduation Planning
    • Yield/Melt
  • Teaching & Learning Technologies
    • AI Captioning
    • Charlie Writing Assistant
  • Other
    • Research Transcription
    • Athletics – Student Performance Model

The Enrollment Management Scenario Planning team develops scenarios related to enrollment, admissions, and courses to guide executives and key leaders in strategic decision making.

Team Role and Book of Business 

  • Admissions
    • Generate target scenarios in partnership with VPEM and director of admissions for university leadership to meet university priorities
    • Produce estimates of the number of admits needed to meet targets for various breakouts for the Rounding the Class committee
    • Create and maintain dashboards that support the operational admissions process
    • Participate in Rounding the Class committee meetings to operate dashboard, provide recommendations, and work with EMSCI to batch decisions
    • Produce appropriate communication throughout the admissions cycle for university leadership
    • Update targets and/or admits needed in response to real time data changes throughout admissions cycle
  • Financial Aid
    • Support the financial aid team with scenario planning
  • Enrollment Projections & Scenarios
    • Work with the Analytics team to run both short term and long-term enrollment projections based on information gathered from the VPEM and university leadership
  • Course Demand
    • Develop course demand methodology based on the enrollment projections that is accessible to the office of the registrar
    • Plan for Purdue University at Indianapolis course demand throughout the teach out period and provide support as new programs launch
    • Utilize course request form data for decision support