The power of data analytics in educational systems

Education has undergone a tremendous transformation over the past decade. One of the more significant contributors in this field is technology. The use of technology in education has not only enabled easier learning but has also helped provide a better analysis of teaching and other protocols adopted by different educational institutions. In today’s digital era, data drives our lives every day, every moment. Everything is now being tracked and analyzed by applications, giving us a new level of personalization across all facets of our lives like never before. Now, just imagine the kind of impact data analytics can have on schools and students, who represent the future of the world we live in!

The age-old approach of operating an educational setup - be it a School, a College or a University - has been carried over from generations without realizing that the process can be made more efficient and less rigorous. The entire procedure, including admissions, selections, enrollment, and clearances still relies on a lot of paperwork. Even the assessment process involves a significant amount of paperwork in the form of report cards, managing exam scores, and attendance records. Yet, this cumbersome process does not yield an output that can help students, teachers, and even the school administration. Traditionally, records were looked upon as valuable data for analysis and prediction of education trends in the future. However, in today’s era, with the digital revolution engulfing the world across various industries in multiple ways, the education industry can now join the race.

We take a look at some of the ways data analytics can empower education:

1. Students: Students are the foundation of any educational institution. With online academic management tools, the analysis of performance by subject and grade can become much easier through visual dashboards and real-time updates. Analysis of students’ performance can also help them to understand their strengths and weaknesses better, enabling more accurate predictions of suitable career paths in the future. This will then enable their journey of learning to be more specific to the field or the subject they wish to specialize in.
2. Parents: Parents play a key role in deciding the future and learning path of their children. With data analytics, parents can get detailed insights into the performance of their children, including a better understanding of their child’s abilities and strengths. An academic management tool with detailed dashboards can provide a holistic view into a child’s performance - from attendance, examinations, areas of weakness - ultimately empowering the parents to play a more active role in their child’s learning.
3. Teachers: A large part of a teacher’s role lies in administration and manual tasks. This includes paperwork and records that track attendance, test/exam scores and syllabus tracking. With detailed dashboards, teachers can get a comprehensive view of a specific student’s performance throughout the academic year and peg it to other factors such as attendance and past year exam scores. The amount of detail and insights a teacher can gain from such correlations can prove useful in student mentorship - especially when dealing with weaker students. Teachers could even analyze non-academic skills such as public speaking, sports, arts, and other co-curricular activities to help the student identify his or her professional strengths at a very early stage in their lives.
4. Administration: School administrators regularly deal with a variety of laborious and manual tasks. Imagine years and rows of hardbound files, receipts, payslips, and other forms! Not only can the registration and enrollment details be saved digitally on the cloud, but also be analyzed to understand the rise or fall in the intake of students in the past years, the number of dropouts, gender ratio, and financial growth of the institute.

If data analytics can help several segments of an institute so effectively, just imagine how efficient it becomes for the head of the institution! The Principal would now easily have access to all the different units across the educational institution and easily analyze which areas need more attention and action.

It is clearly time for some change in Academics - schools across all levels can greatly benefit from data analytics by taking smarter and quicker decisions, ultimately enhancing performance, efficiency, and education as a whole. Let us move towards a data-driven tomorrow!