Tag: SIS

Schools and Big Data

As Director of IT I am often directly involved with our School Management Information System (MIS, sometimes referred to as a Student Information System, SIS).   Throughout my career I have encountered and worked with a number of different MIS vendors.     My general opinion is that they are all “much of a muchness” as although they have different features, strengths and weaknesses, when you average them out the benefits and drawbacks are equal in terms of their magnitude.

These systems contain and allow us to collect a variety of data including both formative and summative student performance data.    We then design reports which allow us to interrogate the data and display it in different data.    This addresses the functionality side of an MIS however is rather weak in terms of the usability.    Users need to know which report displays which information so they can select and use the correct report at the correct time.

Within my school we are currently working on making our system more usable by developing a dashboard system to present important information directly to teachers without them have to seek it out.   This would represent an improvement however I feel still falls some way short.

One way improvement could be brought about on the above is to put more power in the hands of the users, allowing them to easily create their own reports using the data which is available.    The issue with this is it relies both on staff having the skills in data analysis to be able to design effective reports, plus it relies on them having the motivation to undertake this task.   Personally I believe this approach would be very beneficial for a small number of staff within a school, with the majority being unable to access it, even where the schools culture is very much around the use of data.   It would also potentially add another job to teaching staffs role in the need for them to design reports to analyse their data, which would represent an issue given the current situation in relation to workloads.

I think the solution lies with Big Data.   Within the IT world there is a lot of discussion with regards Big Data where large data sets are analysed to reveal trends or patterns, with this info then presented to users.   I see this as being of benefit in education.   As opposed to having to check different reports showing different sub-sets of our data such as the performance of male students vs female students, the system would identify the trends that exist for us.   The system would identify where there are correlations, without users needing to be aware of a potential correlation, therefore removing the potential for a correlation to be missed as we weren’t aware of it.    The system would also be able to look at data at a micro and macro level, either down to individual teachers groups assessment results this year, our out to patterns which may exist across a number of years.

Almost all schools have an MIS these days however they are still very much based on their origins, that of very structured data being analysed by reports.     It is about time we looked at the potential for data warehousing, data mining and Big Data to have an impact on how data is used in schools.

 

 

Silos of Data

Day 11 in the #29daysofwriting house and the housemates are getting a little restless………

Sorry couldn’t resist!  This posting every day is starting to feel a little like the diary room on an episode of Big Brother.   It is also getting steadily more difficult to decide on the topic of the day.

Today I would like to just spend 29mins writing on systems.   In schools we have a large number of different systems.   We have a school (or management) information system, an HR and payroll system, an email and file storage system, a library system, a bus/transport system and a multitude of other systems.

Each system is designed for a specific purpose.   The SIS (or MIS) system has all the personal details of students along with their academic performance data.   The library system has details of students, books and loans.   The HR system has details about all of the staff.

Each system reports its data in a specific way.  The SIS system can produce class registers and parental reports, while the HR system can produce staff lists and the Library system information about student lending habits.

The issue is that even where the systems are supposedly “integrated” in actual fact they are not.    The data exists in Silos, independently in each different system albeit linked by a common identifier such as a student ID number or other ID number.

Having recently read about the impact of Silos and how overcoming them can have a significant effect it makes me wonder about the Silos in school systems.    If we could extract all the data into a single common location where we could apply various business intelligence tools to analyse it we would likely be able to draw new conclusions and through doing so be better informed.   We might be able to identify linkages which previously weren’t apparent.   Maybe students in particular classes or with particular teachers borrow more books and maybe, of these students, a majority perform better.   Obviously I speculate here for illustrative purposes.    The key point being is that we might be able to identify patterns which currently cannot be identified due to the Silo’d nature of data.

School Data: A puzzle or a mystery?

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Over the last couple of weeks I have tweeted on a couple of occasions regarding data in schools. Most of the tweets revolved around the fact that the importance of data and in particularly standardised data such as EMSA and PISA is often stated. As such a fascination seems to have developed with number crunching through detailed student performance data followed by the creation of colourful pie and bar charts with the occasional line graph thrown in for good measure. Now my tweets focused on the fact that I feel educators are being sucked into this world of data, and in some cases are pouring over these tables, charts and graphs for hours on end, presenting them to all who will listen. This time spent looking at data to me seems to be a distraction from what is really important which is student learning. I accept that we need some data to know how students are doing and progressing however I think we need to balance this against the more important task which is key to schools; teaching.     If the data takes hours of time to analyse or if it doesn’t result in changes or action within lessons is it worth it?

It was while listening to Malcolm Gladwells what the dog saw, on the usual journey to work, that something struck me. We are treating student performance and the need to improve it as what Gladwell described as a puzzle. A puzzle according to Gladwell is solved through gathering additional information. As such our fascination with data and having more and more data in the hope of more insight and therefore better results seems logical. However, Gladwell also describe Mysteries; these are situations which are not solved through more data or more information but through the insightful use of what we do know. It is at this point that it struck me; student performance is a mystery not a puzzle. We cannot solve it through more data and in fact all this will do will detract from the core task at hand in schools; teaching. We instead need to focus on using what we do know and have readily available to draw insightful conclusions which we can action.

One thing, it strikes me, stands in the way of this and this is the dreaded school management system. It is designed to gather all the data you will ever need into table after table of grades, scores and criteria achievement. Some will even create the pretty charts and graphs for you. The issue at hand is the usability of these systems. The way they present data requires analysis. It is not instantly user friendly for teachers who want to be able to view data and draw conclusions quickly and on the move. It is my belief that school management systems need to be redesigned. Now, to that end I have started to build a concept for a new more intuitive and user friendly school management system focusing first and foremost on the teacher in the class.

Please if you have any suggestions or would like to contribute ideas to what the ideal school information or school management system should look like and do, etc get in touch.

 

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