2014 Higher Education Technology Landscape

The 2014 Higher Education Technology Landscape infographic from EDUVENTURES is the effort to make sense of the higher education technology landscape for the decision-makers who are tasked with determining new ways to provide better learning outcomes, building and maintaining a modern technology infrastructure, and rationalizing investment decisions.

Leaders in higher education face mounting pressure to deliver and account for better learning outcomes, embrace digital disruption, and replace aging and ineffective infrastructure with newer, cloud-based solutions. To take advantage of this opportunity, new and established vendors have flooded the education technology market, making it one of the most dynamic segments of the high-tech landscape.

It’s estimated that colleges and universities will spend between $20B and $25B this year on technology and services, enabling institutions to support faculty, and administration, as well as effectively market, recruit, enroll, instruct, engage, and prepare students and alums. The solutions span many categories, including enrollment management specialists, adaptive learning platforms, retention solutions, online program managers, social engagement networks, crowdsourcing applications, software-defined networks, big data platforms, and enterprise resource planning (ERP).  The market is vast, confusing, and ill-defined. We hear from our clients regularly that while they want to take advantage of these new tools and solutions, they are perplexed by the ever-growing number of categories and technology vendors, and struggle with how to best to evaluate them.

To meet this growing need among our clients, Eduventures has initiated a new research focus to provide on-going analysis of the technology market to support higher education decision-makers. Our goal is to make the market more understandable, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of technology and service offerings, and help leaders make informed decisions when selecting and implementing solutions that meet their unique institutional and learner needs.

Eduventures has developed a taxonomy to make sense of this technology landscape as a foundation for on-going research and analysis on this dynamic market:

• A student lifecycle framework for understanding the overall market and segments
• An initial categorization of hundreds of vendors serving the market

We have identified over 50 categories and hundreds of providers that market and sell technology and services to post-secondary institutions, which demonstrates how daunting this market can be for higher education leaders. Even with this preliminary analysis, we recognize that there are additional categories and companies to that can be added—our intention is to respond dynamically as new companies emerge and to update this landscape as it continues to mature, converge and evolve.

Complexity is the key message of this design. A lot of work went into identifying and categorizing all of these different services, but the message is clear that it’s a difficult job to setup the technology services any higher educational institution needs.

Any infographic design is going to be shared on it’s own, without the accompanying article, so designers should always include the URL address back to the original in the infographic image. Most people that share infographics don’t include the link back to the infographic landing page, and including that as text in the image file will help your readers find their way back to the full-size, original version you posted.

Thanks to Heather for posting on Linkedin

Where in the World are the Best Schools and the Happiest Kids?

The best test scores don’t always mean the happiest kids at school.  The Best Schools and the Happiest Kids visualizes the results from a worldwide survey of over 500,000 15-year-olds globally.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial international survey compared test scores from 65 countries. Happiness was ranked based on the percentage of students who agreed or disagreed with the statement “I feel happy at school.” Test scores were ranked based on the combined individual rankings of the students’ math, reading, and science scores.

I can’t tell for sure, but it appears that Jake Levy, Data Analyst at BuzzFeed created this data visualization based on the data from OECD survey results.  Infographics like these often get shared without the rest of the article, so it’s important to include all of the necessary framing information in the graphics itself.  Title, descriptive text, sources, URL, publishing company, copyright, etc.

Thanks to Ron Krate on Google+ for posting

Visualizing the School of Design

Visualizing the School of Design is a very data dense infographic poster that analyzes the School of Design at the Politecnico di Milano.

Politecnico di Milano, in order to present the School of Design in its own stand at Salone del Mobile 2013, asked DensityDesign to realize a 4 mt x 2 mt poster showing the structure and the efficiency of the School of Design system at Politecnico. The visualization is a picture of the 2010 / 2011 academic year.

Definitely take a look at the full-size version to appreciate the thought and effort put into the design.  This project was amazingly developed in one week by the team at DensityDesign.

Found on Datavisualization.ch

The Digital Dorm

College is expensive and it is not getting any cheaper. Lucky for us, the advancement in technology and the introduction of apps could actually lower costs! The Digital Dorm infographic from CourseSmart can tell you the details.

College is getting more expensive but going digital helps students keep more money in their pockets in more ways than one. Check out our infographic on how students can save not just money but also time by moving to a digital dorm.

Not only saving money.  The visual story here is also how to save space and clutter in a student’s dorm room, which will help them find that missing homework assignment!

Thanks to Temple for sending in the link!

Fire Code Regulations for Live Christmas Trees in Schools

Fire Code Regulations for Live Christmas Trees in Schools is an informational infographic from the team at Balsam Hill, an online retailer for artificial Christmas trees.  This design is meant to help school officials and purchasing agents all over the country, and not really intended for the general public online.

Setting up a real Christmas tree in a school requires detailed knowledge of a state’s Christmas tree fire code. School fire code regulations for real Christmas trees vary by city and state, and can be overwhelming to puzzle out due to a confusing and sometimes conflicting set of rules. The Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Company has compiled each state’s school fire code regulations for live trees into an infographic for schools and school districts to reference. Look through the infographic to help you decide whether or not an artificial Christmas tree may be a more practical alternative for your school this holiday season.

From a marketing perspective, this design succeeds tremendously.  The overall message is clear: “Regulations around live Christmas trees in schools are complicated.  An artificial tree would be much easier.”  Balsam Hill put together a ton of research (look at the number of sources!), and even though they were able to gather the state level regulations, many cities, counties and individual school districts have their own regulations that may be contradictory.  A number of major cities with different regulations than their state are highlighted, but that list is incomplete.  It only shows a few cities that have different regulations to let the reader know that state level fire codes aren’t the only regulations that schools have to follow.

The design does a good job of clarifying very complicated information, but that can only go so far.  The regulations are actually very complex, so this is still a very long design to thoroughly visualize the data.  Great job using visual design to help readers understand a very complex issue!

You can see additional designs that also cover the regulations for Hotels and Churches.

The Sage Hill Difference marketing infographic & interview

The Sage Hill School has created an infographic as a marketing piece showing many of the different stats about the school’s history and performance.  The Sage Hill Difference has been used as a printed handout, a 7-foot retractable banner, a PDF available for download and the JPG image file online.  The design is used to educate and inform prospective families, parents, students and the general public.

The Sage Difference: 7-foot retractable banner

I asked Torrey Olins, the Director of Communications and Marketing at Sage Hill, some questions about designing and using the infographic as a marketing tool:

Cool Infographics: What software applications were used to help analyze the data and create the design?

Torrey Olins: The piece was created using InDesign. The data was collected and analyzed through a combination of resources from Sage Hill School and our advertising firm, O’leary and Partners (www.adagency.com)  The piece did not require any software for analysis of data.

Cool Infographics: Who designed the infographic?

Torrey Olins: The design of the infographic was a collaboration between myself O’leary and Partners. About six months ago, I came up with the idea of creating an infographic for the school’s marketing efforts in our fall 2012 admission season, and in fact, sent my account manager and her assistant links to coolinfographics.com for inspiration. We were unable to find any other high school that had created an infographic for marketing, so we ended up using elements from a variety of different sources. For example, the school history portion of the infographic was inspired by an infographic created to celebrate the history of a small city.

Because O’leary and Partners has been creating print and digital media for Sage Hill School for several years, they were able to apply our design look and feel (color palate, fonts, etc.) to this piece so that it integrates nicely with our other school communications, while also going in an entirely new direction. I did not want this piece to look like a “one off” and I was pleased that O’leary accomplished my goal of creating an infographic that maintains continuity with our brand.

Cool Infographics: Would you describe the different formats you published the infographic?

Torrey Olins: The infographic was published as an 8.5” x 25” folded print piece that we hand out to prospective students and parents at high school fairs, our Admission Open House and other campus events. We also have a jpg and pdf copy of the infographic on our website (www.sagehillschool.org) and have published it on our Facebook (www.facebook.com/sagehillschool) and Pinterest accounts (www.pinterest.com/sagehillschool). We also reproduced the infographic on two large (7’x3’) retractable banners that we can bring to off campus events or use around campus (we currently have one in our lobby for visitors to see while they are waiting for appointments.)

Cool Infographics: How has the use of the infographic and social media impacted your marketing and recruiting process?

Torrey Olins: Sage Hill School is Orange County, California’s premier independent, coed, nonsectarian high school. The school was founded in 2000 and currently enrolls 466 students in grades 9-12.  Because Sage Hill School is located in a community that does not have as long of a history with independent schools as with the public school system, it is important for us to highlight the differentiators that make Sage Hill School the finest college preparatory option in our area. The infographic is an effective way to communicate the value of a Sage Hill education to the parent who is deciding whether to send a child to public school or pay tuition for Sage Hill School.

The infographic format met my needs for a fresh approach to demonstrate the achievements and differentiators of Sage Hill School to prospective families, as well as reinforcing the value of the school for our currently enrolled families. We are very excited that Sage Hill School is one of (or possibly the first) high schools to utilize the infographic format for marketing in the 2012-2013 admission season!

The recruiting season for independent schools typically begins in October and will last until admission decisions are announced and families sign contracts in the spring. Thus, it is quite early in the process and unfortunately,  it is too soon for us to speak to increases in inquiries/ applications as a result of the infographic or other social media efforts.

Cool Infographics: What has been the reaction and feedback to the infographic?

Torrey Olins: Let’s face it, facts and stats about schools can be extremely dry. For families who are considering a variety of different high school options, numbers and figures tend to run together. Thus far, both current and prospective families have indicated that the information in the infographic is presented in a way that is interesting, fun and memorable.

As a school in our second decade, Sage Hill has established a reputation for innovation in our educational program; this year we are pleased to educate families about Sage Hill School through the use of an innovative communication tool. We are also excited that this piece has put Sage Hill School’s name out in the broader community as an institution that is eager to embrace new media, both inside and beyond the classroom. I have been contacted by a number of other independent schools who are interested in using this format for their marketing as well.

Thanks to Torrey for taking the time to share their process and reaction to using the infographic!

The Rising Cost of Higher Education

The Rising Cost of Higher Education from SchoolTutoring Academy does a good job visually showing the reader how quickly the price of college educations have risen.

Attending a college or university represents a significant investment for families. Tuition fees have continued to rise which has made it increasingly difficult for families to accurately budget and save. This problem is exacerbated for low and middle-income families where tuition fees as a percentage of median family income has increased significantly. Learn how affordable tutoring can help your child.

The design gets to the point immediately.  If the reader only looks at the top portion of the infographic (without scrolling down) they still walk away understanding the key message of how dramatically college costs have risen as a percentage of the median family income.  However, I don’t see any indication that the values have been adjusted for inflation or not.

I also like the concentric doughnut graphs that are used with consistent colors to show the same 8-year comparison for different income level families.  The line chart comparison of annual costs is also clear and easy to understand.

The lower portion of the design becomes too text heavy, and begins to show data values in text without visualizing them.  This is where the design will start to lose readers by trying to convey too much text information.  What is the icon in the description of Private Loans?

The bottom of the design is missing a copyright (or Creative Commons) license and should also include the URL to the infographic landing page where readers can find the original, high-resolution version.

How Has Internet Changed Education?

How has internet changed education infographic from SEO.com explores what kind of impact the Internet has on education. Ever had a question and found yourself on wikipedia? Apparently your not the only one!

If you want evidence of the way the internet is pervading every aspect of our lives, you need look no further than its effect on education. The internet and social media have dramatically changed both teaching and learning.

In fact, most students’ (an incredible 93 percent) first instinct when confronted with a research problem is to turn to Google or Bing to get information rather than going to the library, and despite the best efforts of faculty to discourage its use, Wikipedia is the research resource that is used most often. It’s not only students that are turning to the web, however. A whopping 90 percent of faculty uses social media in the courses they’re teaching, and 8 in 10 have used online video in class. In addition, colleges and universities are reaching out to students in a way they never could before—85 percent of admissions offices use some sort of social media, from video blogging to social networking.

Great clean design.  Easy to read and the visualizations are easy to understand.  The only visual I had an issue with was the grid of icon people.  It’s hard for readers to grasp quantity when the rows aren’t 10 people across, but 33 people across is a very odd number.  33x17=561, 561x10,000=5,610,000, which is less than the “Over 6 million” number on the text.

I’m not sure why the 8 out of 10 faculty data point is shown as 6 out of 8 people in the visualization???

The sources are all listed on the original landing page, but because they are in the infographic design, they are lost whenever someone shares the infographic on another site (like this one), and that hurts the credibility of the design.  That’s one more reason the original landing page URL should be included in the design as well.

Found on WiredAcademic

Timeplots Poster Sale - 30% OFF!

As an exclusive gift to readers of Cool Infographics, Timeplots.com is offering a 30% discount on all posters when you use the Promo Code “sale2011” before the end of the year. 

I love these posters, and I have both the Supreme Court and the American Presidency posters here at my office.  For your office, for a nearby school, for your kids or even a Christmas gift, these posters are a fantastically detailed infographic reference.  The U.S. Supreme Court, the American Presidency, the U.S. Senate and both U.S. Political Parties!

A big thanks to Nathaniel for all of his designs and offering this end-of-the-year discount to the readers of Cool Infographics!

The Flipped Classroom infographic

From Knewton comes and infographic about The Flipped Classrom.  It’s a good explanation of one theory behind changing the classroom environment.  I don’t know how widespread it is, but the results from Detroit look impressive.

Many educators are experimenting with the idea of a flipped classroom model.  So what is it and why is everyone talking about it?  The flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of class and moving “homework” into the classroom.

Thanks to Krista for sending in the link!