Finding gold (star students) in the data mine

The United States, along with the rest of the world, is struggling to keep pace with the growing demand for a knowledgeable and skilled workforce. The National Educational Technology Plan (NETP), put forth by the United States Department of Education, calls for a reinvention of the nation's education system to address shortcomings preparing students for tertiary education and the workforce. Realization of this sweeping goal requires leveraging the power of technology, big data, and embracing a customer relationship management (CRM) perspective, where in this context, the “customers” are students and customer “loyalty” equates to their engagement in the learning process. Coordinated data collection will improve results for individual schools and enable evidence-based educational practices to be shared among schools. Big data provides the means to identify customers' needs, abilities and wants - as well as the means to implement reward and incentive programs that recognize student successes and loyalty to educational attainment. Lessons gleaned from CRM initiatives in industry are used to conceptualize a systems architecture to support customer relationship management in educational environments. Case studies - based on the Best We Can Be (BWCB) online college and career readiness program, and the Global Travel and Tourism Partnership (GTTP), a multi-country educational program to introduce students to career opportunities in Travel and Tourism - are presented to demonstrate practical implementation of CRM principles in an educational setting.