I’ve just been in a Google webinar and discovered there is a newly launched benchmarking service, discussed on the Google Analytics blog. If you share your data anonymously, you’ll be able to benchmark it against other industry verticals. Being able to set targets for OpenLearn was difficult when we started out. We had some great data from MIT to go on, and of course our traffic figures to other OU sites, plus predictions we could make based on planned communications activity, but there are a lot of factors to take into account when comparing results. I suspect many of the OER sites are using different software to collate data and different software gives different results. For a number of reasons, on OpenLearn we use three different packages to collect data and they all give different figures!

So I wonder whether we can use this service to share OER data and create benchmarks? The analysis and conversation around this data is still important, but perhaps data sharing in this way would help generate debate. This is happening in OER research and evaluation circles, but I’m thinking of something that could be shared more widely and easily than several annual reports. See my lonely comment in the OCWC forum on Comparing success of OERs.

I’m not sure if you select an industry vertical from a set list or whether you can specify the vertical but I suspect Google provides a list. So perhaps we won’t be able to compare OER data but data from educational sites. I would take a look but I got to this screen and got scared…

I know its all anonymous and protected by Google but while I advocate the sharing (and mashing up of data) I have been indoctrinated to feel fear… I am visualising the headlines if the data was exploited or the faces of the people on the ‘Ethics Committee’ (who I’ve never met but are made to sound formidable by university researchers). So I didn’t press the button.

Maybe Google will start encouraging people by saying ‘So and So’s data is in here’, even if they don’t match up the provider with the exact data.

So if I show you mine, will you show me yours?