A Holistic View of Data Warehousing in Education

Data warehousing (DW) is a widespread and essential practice in business organizations that support the data analytic and decision-making process. Despite the importance of DW in complex organizations, the adoption of a data warehouse (DWH) in education is apparently lower compared with other industries. To clarify this situation, this paper presents a systematic mapping that includes the study of empirical research papers from 2008 to 2018 on the topic of DW in education. For this paper, we applied a qualitative and quantitative approach based on a four-stage research method with the objective to have a holistic view of DWHs in education. After filtering and applying the proposed method, 34 relevant papers were identified and studied in detail. The study revealed interesting facts; for example, Kimball's approach is the most applied methodology for DWH design in education. In addition, a mapping between this comprehensive collection of research papers covering educational DW and six dimensions of analysis (schema proposal, analysis of the user requirements, analysis of the business requirements, effectiveness, implementation, and data analysis) was performed. From this analysis, we discovered that the star schema is the most implemented approach. The purpose of the mapping was to explore and identify the priority areas of research and the research gaps within the academic community. These gaps are a source of opportunities to start new lines of research.