Skip to main content

Using Self Organizing Maps to Find Good Comparison Universities

  • Conference paper
Partially Supervised Learning (PSL 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7081))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 570 Accesses

Abstract

Colleges and universities do not operate in a vacuum and they do not have a lock on “best practices”. As a result it is important to have other schools to use for “benchmark” comparisons. At the same time schools and their students change. What might have been good “benchmarks” in the past might not be appropriate in the future. This research demonstrates the viability of Self Organizing Maps (SOMs) as a means to find comparable institutions across many variables. An example of the approach shows which schools in the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges might be the best “benchmarks” for Fort Lewis College.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. COPLAC, Data Profile (2009), http://www.coplac.org/resources.html (retrieved January 5, 2011)

  2. Benchmarking in Higher Education: Adapting Best Practices To Improve Quality. Eric Clearinghouse, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  3. Kohonen, T.: Self-Organizing Maps, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin (2000)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Venna, J., Kaski, S.: Comparison of Visualization Methods for an Atlas of Gene Expression Data Sets. Information Visualization 6(2) (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Kaski, S., Nikkilä, J., Oja, M., Venna, J., Törönen, P., Castrén, E.: Trustworthiness and metrics in visualizing similarity of gene expression. BMC Bioinformatics (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Visa, Eklund, T., Back, B., Vanharanta, H., Ari.: Using the Self-Organizing Map as a Visualization Tool in Financial Benchmarking. Information Visualization 2(3) (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Mazanec, J.: Positioning Analysis with Self-Organizing Maps – An Exploratory Study on Luxury Hotels. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 6, 80–96 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Castellani, B., Castellani, J., Spray, S.L.: Grounded Neural Networking: Modeling Complex Quantitative Data. Symbolic Interaction 26(4) (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Cooper, C., Burns, A.: Kohonen Self-organizing Feature Maps as a Means to Benchmark College and University Websites. Journal of Science Education and Technology 16(3), 203–211 (2007), doi:10.1007/sl0956-007-9053

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Saha, A.: Cited in Data Modeling for Metrology and Testing in Measurement science (2002); Pavese, F., Forbes, A.: p. 235 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Friedhelm Schwenker Edmondo Trentin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Cooper, C., Kilmer, R. (2012). Using Self Organizing Maps to Find Good Comparison Universities. In: Schwenker, F., Trentin, E. (eds) Partially Supervised Learning. PSL 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7081. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28258-4_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28258-4_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28257-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28258-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics