NIU has partnered with EAB to implement a platform, Academic Performance Solutions (APS). APS is a data analytics tool that brings our institution’s student, HR and finance data into a single platform that generates structured reports and peer benchmarks that can be used to support metrics for our university goals. We partnered with APS because we lacked access to this type of data, which caused us to lose time, dollars, and other resources. APS is part of a wider effort to ensure that you have the data you need to make an informed decision. Tableau is another important piece of that effort.
We will use APS to build a data-informed culture. The data will inform decisions but will never tell us the right or wrong answer is. We will begin using APS data for course planning, which will place everyone on equal footing to start the conversation, save you time in searching for and thinking about what kind of information to include and help us identify needs across the institution.
Academic leaders are responsible for making critical resource decisions, such as faculty hiring, course planning and driving impactful change on campus. Yet, you might lack the right or sufficient information to support decisions, balance a breadth of responsibilities (administrative, teaching, research, community engagement, etc.) and make decisions that support the success of your unit, college and NIU.
Our goals in putting data directly into your hands are to:
Currently, the platform has been made available to deans, associate deans, department chairs and college business managers. In the future, all NIU faculty and staff will have access to the APS tool.
In addition to the APS tool, faculty and staff also have access to other EAB resources. These resources include blog posts, research reports, webinars and training materials that are focused on the APS platform and best practices in higher education. You can set up a free account with EAB. The access to EAB is separate from APS access.
If you have trouble accessing the platform or have questions about navigating the platform, please contact Celeste Latham (clatham@niu.edu).
There are several helpful resources available:
These training sessions require logging into EAB:
Periodically EAB staff will host workshops on areas of the APS platform. Those workshops will be listed here.
If you or those in your department would like a walk-through of the platform, please contact Celeste Latham at clatham@niu.edu to schedule a one-on-one or group tutorial.
Data in the APS platform is an aggregated view of our institution’s student, HR and finance data that has undergone data quality tests to ensure a consistent methodology is used. Often, people think data is incorrect when it’s simply measuring something different than what was expected. APS provides a data dictionary so that you can see exactly how the data point was calculated.o.
Data in the APS platform is updated each semester and is historical data. It’s intended to give us a historical snapshot of HR, student and financial data. For some purposes (like the number of faculty in a department), term data is appropriate and relevant. For others (how many students have registered for a particular class?), it is not and Tableau is a complementary platform that provides data that is updated more frequently.
As new modules in APS are introduced the data will be updated more frequently to support the analytics of the new module.
APS is one source of data that is particularly relevant for academic affairs. In addition to APS, we will continue to leverage our resources in Institutional Research to provide timely data and reports.
In the training sessions, there were several opportunities identified:
The Home Page within the Academic Performance Solutions platform has webinars and documentation on how to use and interpret the APS platform.
Some of the training for APS is on the EAB platform, which is a separate login. You should be able to create an EAB account if you do not have one already. To create an account go to the EAB website and click login. If you do not have an account, click create an account. Once the account is created you should be able to access the training.
In the APS Platform, each metric or KPI has an ellipsis (…) at the top of the graph with the mouse hovers over the data. When you click on the ellipsis, a definition of the metric will appear. To obtain additional information, you may have to click on the metrics and filters tab.
The APS Benchmarks are determined by the university based on the participating universities. Northern Illinois University can up to three cohorts at a time and can change them every four months or so.
The APS metrics and benchmarking may vary from other reports because of the timing of the data and how the data is organized. APS can be used to support leadership decisions when looking at both the college, department and program. The data can be used to analyze academic performance, especially when looking at year over year performance and comparing the department against benchmarking cohorts.
The data in APS comes from the university’s three PeopleSoft platforms (HR, Financials and Student). Five years of historical data has been loaded into the platform.