ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that technologies allow institutional researchers to continually update the student profile and better understand student dynamics. In diligently balancing archival reporting and forecasting analysis aimed at improving institutional effectiveness, institutional research (IR) professionals report a greater workload within the reporting component. Institutional researchers face ongoing changes in the technological working environment and in the demand for information. The work environment of institutional researchers has also been affected by the practice of educational data mining, which has been experiencing near-exponential growth. The growth of big data has created a need for IR not only to provide human subject protection training but also to address student record privacy concerns. Developing and implementing successful data strategy requires the collaboration of all applicable units at the institutional and system level. A data strategy should take all those groups into account, in particular by evaluating how best to meet their educational and training needs.
