Business Intelligence and Analytics based tool for academic decision making. Case of Bluefields Indian & Caribbean University

Abstract

In recent years, organizations and Higher Education Institutions have generated large amounts of data through various computer systems. This has marked the transition of an era; now, we are in the era of Big Data where efforts are focused on what to do with the data generated; due to this, Business Intelligence and Analytics, which encompass a set of technologies and strategies that allow analyzing data and providing information to support decision making. Bluefields Indian & Caribbean University (BICU), has expressed interest in recent years in acquiring and implementing tools that allow it to minimize the management time, analysis, extraction and visualization of its academic data. The objective of this project is the development of a Business Intelligence and Analytics based tool to increase the efficiency of decision making at BICU. The development was focused on Bill Inmon’s methodology; in this way, it is guaranteed that the data are organized by topics and entity known by the workers of the institution to ensure a good interpretation of the data, the design of the Data Warehouse, was carried out in a top-down way. Satisfactory results were obtained; however, there are aspects that can be improved, among those considered is to incorporate predictive models to predict whether the academic history prior to college, location of origin, ethnicity or gender influences the academic performance of students.