All sorts of data analysis have been used in the field of education for years to analyze enrollments and performance among different groups of people, response to novel teaching methods, etc. So the main headlines from big data/data science aspects seem to be just the availability of more data, e.g. from online education. This data is more global and can help us in understanding how different students learn.
Machine learning, on the other hand, is a newcomer. But it has already affected the admission process at universities as basic machine learning algorithms are used for selecting the candidates. In the future, you can expect it to become even more prominent and possibly even extend to the entire decision-making process for admissions. If you want a detailed explanation of Data Science then do check out Intellipaat’s blog which will help you in understanding DS.
You can get a hands-on project by referring to Data Science online courses which will teach you Data Science from scratch to advance.
And if you are more into videos then do check out the following video tutorial which will help you in mastering in the field of Data Science: