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Mission
The Higher Education Data Warehousing Forum is a network of
higher education colleagues dedicated to promoting the sharing
of knowledge and best practices regarding knowledge management
in colleges and universities, including building data warehouses,
developing institutional reporting strategies, and providing
decision support.
Who We Are
The HEDW Forum is a group of colleagues working at colleges
and universities that includes technical developers and administrators
of data access and reporting systems, data custodians, institutional
researchers, and consumers of data representing a variety
of internal university audiences.
Background
The inception of the HEDW Forum occurred informally during
2003, when a small group of product-specific colleagues from
higher education met to discuss reporting strategies, issues,
and potential solutions with regard to reporting and data
access. These discussions led to a small forum of about 30
colleagues in October 2003 at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois. The success and value of the presentations and discussion
during the first forum led to a consensus that a second event
be coordinated, with a broader, non product-specific audience
of higher education peers. Northwestern University hosted
the second event in April 2005, and was pleasantly overwhelmed
at the extensive interest from a variety of institutions in
participating and presenting. A total of approximately 160
participants met during two days of informative presentations,
lively discussion, and networking among colleagues from across
the organizations of more than 50 institutions. Based on the
feedback regarding these two events, it was determined that
the forum should be held annually, and that mechanisms should
be implemented to encourage and facilitate sharing of best
practices on an ongoing basis.
Goals
- Share best practices and resources to create, develop,
support and leverage higher education decision support projects
- Focus on the entire project lifecycle including justification,
planning, design, development, deployment, support and growth
- Discuss institutional issues such as sponsorship, reporting
strategy, data access and security policies, data definitions
and data quality processes, and communication to support
successful projects
- Include perspectives from both providers and consumers
of decision support systems
- Provide a product-neutral environment of presentations,
best practices, and sharing
- Maintain an internal higher education discussion and networking
constituency, independent from consultants or vendors
Activities and Resources
Representatives from Information Technology (IT), Institutional
Research (IR), and functional/business units at the administrative,
academic, and department levels participate and exchange information
pertinent to the various stages in the lifecycle of planning,
designing, developing, implementing, and managing solutions
to support data access and reporting. This is accomplished
through:
- An annual meeting where participants gather in an informal,
conference-style environment to hear presentations from
institutions regarding their experiences and expertise in
implementing decision support strategies and systems
- A website that provides resources including presentations
from previous forums, contact lists, and links to other
resource websites for decision support and data warehousing
- A listserve enabling participants to query colleagues
and share pertinent information about their own experiences
and expertise on an ongoing basis
- Individual networking with colleagues who can share their
experiences and offer advice.
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