09 Nov 2026
<a href="https://bitcomme.com/faculty-ai-guides-program-to-explore-how-ai-will-shape-education/” title=”Faculty AI Guides program to explore how AI will shape education”>Education
Edition 21 2026
Introducing Atlas and Genie, a new way to find and explore approved data at UNSW
ATLAS is a central catalogue of approved data products and data assets. Within each data product is a specialised Genie, an AI-powered tool that lets you explore approved data by asking questions in everyday language, without writing code.
A clearer starting point
UNSW holds a wealth of information about our students, teaching, research and operations. Finding the right information and understanding what it shows can take time. The Enterprise Data Office (EDO) is making this easier by bringing approved data products, dashboards and other analytics resources together in Atlas.
On 22 October, the EDO introduced Atlas to nearly 60 staff from across UNSW, who are helping test and refine it.
The first data product, Student Enrolment, brings together aggregated, de-identified enrolment information with definitions and guidance. Within Student Enrolment, authorised users can use Genie to explore the data and view results as tables or charts.
Spotting an unexpected pattern
The Forecasting and Reporting team in UNSW Planning and Performance (UPP) noticed an unusual pattern in enrolment data over the last two years for the main Medicine program.
The program has a distinctive structure: students return to Year 5 after some have completed a separate Honours program in Year 4. Working with Medicine & Health, the team investigated and found that study previously classified as Year 5 load was now being classified as Year 2 in the
Sonia Powell, Head of Forecasting and Reporting, wrote a short sentence asking Genie for the figures she wanted. Within seconds, it produced a bar chart that made the pattern easy to see, with a clear way to share it with colleagues investigating the
Building trust and confidence
Ruff Mantua, Manager Customer Analytics Transformation in the Future Students Office, is among the early Atlas users helping refine the experience.
“My initial impression of the application is that it strikes a good balance between governance, security and usability,” Ruff said.
He was also impressed by Genie’s fast responses. In his testing, the answers appeared closely tied to governed data sources, which he said was critical to trusting the results.
More to come
The EDO plans to add data products for Student Performance and Admissions to Atlas before the end of 2026. The first group of users is testing the platform and sharing feedback to prepare for a broader rollout in early 2027.
This is an early step in putting UNSW’s Enterprise Data Strategy into practice: making trusted information easier for academic and professional staff to find and use, including those who don’t work with data every day.
Access to each data product will depend on the information it contains and the reason a person needs it.
Visit the EDO Data Analytics webpageto watch the demos and see what’s coming next.
