Make Data-Driven Decisions the Status Quo

March 23, 2024 |  5 Key Initiatives, Budget, Data, Students
3 min

LabStats data can spark changes across higher education institutions and improve student perceptions of available resources.

As IT leaders begin to step into the spotlight to take on student success and budget challenges, they’ll need powerful and reliable tools to collect and analyze data. Hardware and software usage data, especially when collected over time and across an entire institution, can provide the necessary insights to drive change in higher education.

“We’ve learned that data sparks insights and that insights lead to better decisions.”

Educause 2023 Top 10 IT Issues

What usage data is available?

LabStats is the leading computer lab usage tracking software that collects data in three categories: hardware, software, and user. Within the categories, data is marked by time and location, enabling a wide range of combinations that are relevant to higher education IT teams.

LabStats provides the following data points:

  • Login count (by user, computer or location)
  • Session start time, end time, duration
  • Unique users who have logged in by location
  • Utilization percentage of an application over time
  • Usage time (of computers and applications)
  • Application launch counts, times and duration
  • Focus times of applications (sorts out background apps)
  • Inventory of applications 
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How to visualize usage data

LabStats reports are easy to use and can be produced with just a few clicks. LabStats reports visualize computer lab license usage, giving IT teams decision-enabling hardware and software usage data without a burdensome ongoing time investment. Raw data and reports can be shared with permission levels or exported to keep all relevant stakeholders informed, regardless of technical proficiency. 

LabStats Power BI Dashboard Sample

LabStats’ Power BI Dashboards are a quick-start option to data analysis at scale. The Software Usage Template enables IT teams to manage and optimize license expenditures with knowledge of when, where, and how applications are used. The Computer Usage Template enables teams to visualize meaningful location and allocation decisions with knowledge of where and when hardware is used.

The LabStats API is a powerful system that allows communication between LabStats and institution-owned business intelligence applications and tools. The ability to connect these separate systems is incredibly powerful and allows organizations to integrate data collected by LabStats into the