Big data and educational planning: how chaos can reenergize a necessary tool

So what can big data bring to educational planning? A lot. As much as planning can bring to big data. However, despite the promise of this alignment, making it effective requires overcoming some challenges. First, we need a thorough understanding of what big data is and how the data it generates differ from the data traditionally used in planning. This is the subject of the next section. Second, we need to outline what needs to change in our approach to educational problems in order to incorporate big data into planning. We will explore some possibilities in the third section of this article. Third, we need to build some baseline conditions –both at the infrastructure and institutional levels– to link big data and planning. The last section will look into some related lines of action.