Abstract:

The nature of Higher Education (HE) systems encompasses different internal and external stakeholders, as well as the substantial budgetary funds allocated by governments in support of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) operations. This has led to stakeholder demands for assurance that resources are used in the most efficient way, thus, Quality Assurance (QA) plays an essential role in assuring that the organizational mission and objectives are aligned to meet the expectations of stakeholders. This paper discusses an extensive literature review for identifying current architectures for Business Intelligence in Higher Education, and the use of these architectures in the developing of Business Intelligence dashboard. The paper discusses the role of dashboards in monitoring quality in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and how reports generated through dashboards can be utilized for the accreditation process in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The paper also discusses the role of social media which can be used to assess service quality through sentiment analysis. The paper outlines the integration of dashboards and social media for monitoring and supporting decision making processes in Higher Education. The paper contributes in identify the sub elements of an assessment framework and the validation through focused interviews techniques by Quality Assurance professionals to determine its usefulness in assisting decision making. Future work will be to develop the dashboard to use the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment standards as a reference of information to be included in dashboard design.

Keywords:

Dashboards, Higher Education Institutions, Business Intelligence, Monitoring, Accreditation, Social Media, Decision Support, Saudi Arabia.