Summary: Data dashboards: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 17:34, 10 June 2016

Written by Mica Pollock and Jedd Cohen for the dashboard project, with initial dashboard development by Somerville technologist Seth Woodworth and next development for piloting by David Lord of San Diego

Click here for the Overview and key findings on this project; click here for the Expanded story on this project.

What communication challenges did this project address?

In diverse districts across the country, administrators, teachers, and approved service providers are often unable to quickly review patterns in basic data affecting students – like trends in their absences, test scores, grades, and credits. This is often due to the high cost of cutting-edge student data systems (or, the high cost of professional development showing educators how to use the systems they have). Families, for their part, are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card), and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html). As both educators and parents know, gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting young people remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation. How are speakers of language X doing on standardized tests? Who is enrolled in which afterschool program? Was Jose's absence rate over the past semester unusual?

In Somerville in 2009, teachers and administrators said they couldn’t easily view or sort patterns in student data because that data was buried in different “fields” in the student information system (SIS), which Somerville couldn’t afford to replace or fundamentally upgrade. Over the past two years, several local technologists, a teacher, and several researchers have been working with the teachers' families, related afterschool providers, and two principals in the Somerville School District to help design and create "dashboard" tools using open source software (free software that any developer can adapt).

A "dashboard" is a quick, visually simple view of student data, all in one place. Our "dashboards" are designed to let (appropriate) viewers go to a single place – on the web – to find and sort comprehensive data on each student, class of students, and the entire school. Particularly in designing our "individual view" (which would display an individual student's data to student, parent, teacher, and approved service providers), we’ve been working to design a tool that not only displays basic data on students, but also launches a focused conversation among stakeholders about that data.

The first dashboard below (our "administrator" and "teacher" view) shows educators data on a school or classroom of students. The "individual view" dashboard beneath it shows data on an individual student to student, teachers, parents, and approved afterschool providers. This view also allows these people to communicate with each other through the “comment boxes.” (Names are fictional to preserve anonymity.)

On the OneVille Project, the dashboard was one of six subprojects and our first effort to create a tech tool totally from scratch with young local technologists. Development with our Somerville colleagues took more budgeted hours than any of us originally anticipated, and after some excellent pro bono work by David Lord of San Diego, by Spring 2012 we were about 60 development hours from pilot-readiness on the admin and teacher views (and roughly 300 hours from pilot-readiness on the individual view). Remaining work: to finish tweaking the final programming "tubes" linking the dashboard to Somerville's Student Information System so that data could be displayed 100% glitch-free. The "code" for all of the dashboard views is linked on the Overview and key findings page and to date is the core "product" of this pilot. Open source code also means that any developer anywhere can develop on the product we made. For example, community youth-serving and university outreach orgs needing to view and sort youth- and student-related data have expressed interest in a similar free product developed for their specific needs. See the Overview and key findings and Expanded story pages for the full story of developing this tool.

Why is it important to improve communications?

What we found:

¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display -- and, be able to sort that data to check for patterns.

¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

How do the dashboards work? How might they be designed?

You can see how we designed our dashboards in Overview and key findings and Expanded story.

How do you know if your school could improve communication?

Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

➢ To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?

➢ How does your school make data on students visible to school administrators, classroom teachers, and afterschool providers? And how about parents? Which necessary data is readily available, and which isn't?

➢ What infrastructure would support actual conversations about "data," between the people who share young people's lives?

➢ Which conversations about data should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?

➢ What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known? By whom?

➢ Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?

➢ If so, how might low cost tech development or professional development on the tools you already have support such information-sharing?

➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.

We'd love to spark a lively exchange between people working on similar things.

Want to talk further?

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Contact point people for the dashboard project directly at:

Jedd Cohen (jic378@mail.harvard.edu); Mica Pollock (mica.pollock@gmail.com)

Click here for the Overview and key findings on this project; click here for the Expanded story on this project.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-THIS IS JUST A FEW MINUTES' WORK OF DUMPING STUFF. TBD: SHOULD THIS HAVE THE SAME FORMAT AS THE [[Parent connector network]] page, FOR EXAMPLE? I'VE SHAPED IT SO IT DOES. DOES THAT WORK?
+''Written by Mica Pollock and Jedd Cohen for the dashboard project, with initial dashboard development by Somerville technologist Seth Woodworth and next development for piloting by David Lord of San Diego
-==What aspect of communication did we want to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?==
+Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Overview and key findings</font>]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Expanded story</font>]] '''on this project.
-Teacher, parents, principal, and afterschool staff at the Healey School (K-8) have been working together to create a multilingual online dashboard for quick check-ins on student progress toward standard benchmarks. This includes an online family report card (that also supports tutors) and an administrator/teacher data view.
+===What communication challenges did this project address?===
-Parents typically do not see test scores and attendance on a regular basis. They can log into X2, the information system, but many don't have passwords or don't know they have them, or forget them.
+In diverse districts across the country, administrators, teachers, and approved service providers are often unable to quickly review patterns in basic data affecting students – like trends in their absences, test scores, grades, and credits. This is often due to the high cost of cutting-edge student data systems (or, the high cost of professional development showing educators how to use the systems they have). Families, for their part, are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card), and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html). As both educators and parents know, gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting young people remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation. How are speakers of language X doing on standardized tests? Who is enrolled in which afterschool program? Was Jose's absence rate over the past semester unusual?
-Also, X2 doesn't show test score growth. Test scores are kept in chronological order and since students take many tests, it is hard for teachers to see growth on a single test from year to year.
+In Somerville in 2009, teachers and administrators said they couldn’t easily view or sort patterns in student data because that data was buried in different “fields” in the student information system (SIS), which Somerville couldn’t afford to replace or fundamentally upgrade. Over the past two years, several local technologists, a teacher, and several researchers have been working with the teachers' families, related afterschool providers, and two principals in the Somerville School District to help design and create "dashboard" tools using open source software (free software that any developer can adapt).
-The principal was never able to easily sort any of his data; it required sending queries to a central office and waiting to get charts returned.
+A "dashboard" is a quick, visually simple view of student data, all in one place. Our "dashboards" are designed to let (appropriate) viewers go to a single place – on the web – to find and sort comprehensive data on each student, class of students, and the entire school. Particularly in designing our "individual view" (which would display an individual student's data to student, parent, teacher, and approved service providers), we’ve been working to design a tool that not only displays basic data on students, but also launches a focused conversation among stakeholders about that data.
-Most tools for data display in schools cost districts a lot of money, and they aren't designed by educators or parents. Our open source dashboard is designed to help teachers, administrators, parents, and tutors communicate about students' progress toward standard benchmarks. The goal was to create a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent.  We also wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back about data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another. Most displays of data in schools are one way only, from teacher to parent.
+The first dashboard below (our "administrator" and "teacher" view) shows educators data on a school or classroom of students. The "individual view" dashboard beneath it shows data on an individual student to student, teachers, parents, and approved afterschool providers. This view also allows these people to communicate with each other through the “comment boxes.” (Names are fictional to preserve anonymity.)
-==What is the main communication improvement we made?==
+[[Image:Admin Dash 2012-01-25.jpg|Admin Dash 2012-01-25.jpg]]
-Our hope is that the OneVille Online Family Report Card can work to close crucial and persistent communication gaps among families, teachers, and afterschool providers.  (LINK TO THE NEW VISIONS STUFF HERE, ETC., FROM THAT REPORT LAST SUMMER)
+[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]
-This dashboard – a free tool for schools -- presents data such as attendance, grades, MCAS and MAP test scores and growth, and teacher comments. In addition, unlike other one-way data displays, the tool provides a space for family, teacher, and providers to communicate about homework, long-term assignments, demonstration of skills, and social-emotional development. Google Translate assists with translation.
+On the OneVille Project, the dashboard was one of six subprojects and our first effort to create a tech tool totally from scratch with young local technologists. Development with our Somerville colleagues took more budgeted hours than any of us originally anticipated, and after some excellent pro bono work by David Lord of San Diego, by Spring 2012 we were about 60 development hours from pilot-readiness on the admin and teacher views (and roughly 300 hours from pilot-readiness on the individual view). Remaining work: to finish tweaking the final programming "tubes" linking the dashboard to Somerville's Student Information System so that data could be displayed 100% glitch-free. The "code" for all of the dashboard views is linked on the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Overview and key findings</font>]] ''' page and to date is the core "product" of this pilot. Open source code also means that any developer anywhere can develop on the product we made. For example, community youth-serving and university outreach orgs needing to view and sort youth- and student-related data have expressed interest in a similar free product developed for their specific needs.  See the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Overview and key findings</font>]] ''' and '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Expanded story</font>]] ''' pages for the full story of developing this tool.
-Viewers can message each other through the dashboard's comment/question boxes. Ideally, this allows parents, teachers, and afterschool staff to collaboratively set goals for student achievement, in partnership with students themselves.
+===Why is it important to improve communications?===
+What we found:
-Parents are encouraged to shape their conversation around Somerville's existing rubrics for student achievement, also making them more attuned to those rubrics.
+:*'''<font color=red>¡Aha!</font> A gap in student data equals a gap in service.
-We are working toward having teachers, tutors, and parents able to communicate on a running basis, with translation from Google. See this mockup: xx
+:*'''<font color=red>¡Aha!</font> One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display -- and, be able to sort that data to check for patterns.
-[[TBD: SCREEN SHOTS OR, ACTUAL LINKS TO THE LIVE STUFF?]]
+:*'''<font color=red>¡Aha!</font> Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.
+:*'''<font color=red>¡Aha!</font> In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.
-==What's our main aha about improving the communication infrastructure of public education?==
+===How do the dashboards work? How might they be designed?===
-holes in data = holes in student service
+:*You can see how we designed our dashboards in '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Overview and key findings</font>]] '''and '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Expanded story</font>]]'''.
+===How do you know if your school could improve communication?===
+'''Questions to ask about the current system in your school:
-==The Process: How did this work develop over time?==
+:➢	To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
+:➢	How does your school make data on students visible to school administrators, classroom teachers, and afterschool providers? And how about parents? Which necessary data is readily available, and which isn't?
+:➢	What infrastructure would support actual conversations ''about'' "data," between the people who share young people's lives?
+:➢	Which conversations about data should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
+:➢	What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known? By whom?
+:➢      Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
+:➢      If so, how might low cost tech development or professional development on the tools you already have support such information-sharing?
+:➢      ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?
-Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident, had already made an Excel spreadsheet the year before we began work on the dashboard. We did some handywork (participant observation in data drudgery!) to get new data like afterschool enrollment onto his spreadsheet and to consider the new "fields" for data that needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., enrollment and attendance in afterschool programs, which such programs weren't keeping in Somerville's core data system, X2.) SomerPromise, the Mayor's new Children's Zone-like initiative, was also interested in standard data display, particularly the administrative view and the ability to show data on afterschool programs.
+=== The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.===
-We built on tools already under construction in the District. We made Somerville's K-6 report card (typically handed out on paper) online and color-coded, and added the ability for parents to write back to teachers, in their language, about their reactions (we encouraged use of Google Translate to translate basic material in order to prompt further communications).
+We'd love to spark a lively exchange between people working on similar things.
-Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom in xxxx. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face to face and phone conversations with students and parents.
+'''Want to talk further?
-(STUFF FROM THAT BLOG POST HERE? IN GENERAL, USE MATERIAL FROM BLOG POSTS OR, DO WE HAVE TO WRITE 'NEW' STUFF?)
+Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?
+Contact point people for the dashboard project directly at:
-==What are some particularly interesting findings?==
+Jedd Cohen (jic378@mail.harvard.edu); Mica Pollock (mica.pollock@gmail.com)
+Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Overview and key findings</font>]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|<font color=#0000FF>Expanded story</font>]] '''on this project.
-==Glitches and Stumbling Blocks to Consider: If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about?==

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