In today’s digitized world, the significance of data is clear. However, the true power lies in effectively harnessing data. While IT Departments and Data Teams may be big players in making those harnesses, it’s up to the end-user, who sometimes has minimal IT experience, to use those tools and make them meaningful, resulting in people who aren’t just consumers of data but who can interact with it fluently to make better decisions. But these people need the gateways and tools to make this happen.
Enter data products, the unsung heroes of our digital realm, offering targeted solutions that transform vast data troves into actionable insights. The magic of data products is their ability to empower ‘citizen data analysts’, individuals who might not boast a deep data analytics background but carry a wealth of domain-specific knowledge. They have the curiosity, passion, and background to make the most of the available data, and they may have individual ideas about how best to use it.
Sarah’s Journey of Data Empowerment
Sarah, the reading intervention specialist at Maple Elementary School, starts her day with her favorite tool: her personalized dashboard on PowerBI. This dashboard isn’t just any dashboard; it’s one she crafted, merging data from various data products to provide a holistic view tailored to her needs. It offers her an overview of reading scores, resource allocations, student engagement metrics, and collaboration notes, all in one unified space, and even available to her on her tablet as she moves from room to room to work with various students – or even to find a quiet place to do her planning.
From her dashboard, Sarah can deep dive into the Student Performance Tracker. Here, she gets a detailed visualization of reading scores from multiple assessments, allowing her to pinpoint patterns and identify students needing intervention.
By midday, as she’d identified a struggling student who needed some specialized resources, she turned to the Resource Allocator. Resource Allocator is a tool she uses to find the best resources and books to recommend for a particular student. It has access to the student’s assessment results, the school’s library catalog for reading books, Sarah’s inventory of intervention tools, and the district’s recommended interventions. After analyzing a student’s profile, Resource Allocator recommends appropriate resources for that student. Sarah has compiled her inventory in a spreadsheet, tracking what she has available at any given moment. By linking the spreadsheet with resources in the school library that are also available, she’s making her task much more streamlined and efficient, allowing her to pick up some appropriate books before meeting with the student.
In the afternoon, her PowerBI dashboard alerts notify her of changes in student engagement. Curious, she taps into the Engagement Monitor. This tool, integrated with Microsoft Office365 and Maple Elementary’s learning management system and intervention systems, offers her a granular view of how students engage with their allocated resources.
Ending her day, Sarah reflects on her insights and strategies, readying herself to collaborate with peers and parents.
Sarah’s PowerBI Mastery: No IT Training Required
With her background focused primarily on reading intervention rather than IT, one might wonder how Sarah manages to create such a comprehensive dashboard on PowerBI. The answer lies in the user-centric design of the data products and PowerBI.
Each data product developed by the IT department of Maple Elementary resides in individual PowerBI workspaces. These workspaces are structured containers designed with clear naming conventions and organized datasets. They serve as dedicated hubs for each product, making data discovery and exploration intuitive.
When Sarah decides to create or update her dashboard, she doesn’t need to write complex code or queries. Instead, she utilizes PowerBI’s user-friendly interface to:
Connect to Workspaces: Sarah can access the desired data product workspace with a few clicks. The intuitive layout means she doesn’t have to hunt around; she selects the workspace corresponding to the data product she wants to integrate.
Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Sarah drags relevant data fields onto her canvas. Whether it’s a chart showing reading scores from the Student Performance Tracker or a table of resources from the Resource Allocator, the process is visual and straightforward.
Customize Visuals: PowerBI offers a plethora of visualization options. Sarah can choose bar graphs, pie charts, heat maps, or any other visual that best represents her data. Plus, she can ensure the dashboard aligns with her aesthetic preferences with easy-to-use formatting tools.
Set Alerts: Sarah can set alerts on specific metrics to stay updated on significant changes or trends. This way, she’s immediately notified if, for instance, a student’s engagement drops significantly.
Share and Collaborate: Once satisfied with her dashboard, Sarah can easily share it with other stakeholders directly from PowerBI. They can then provide feedback, which she can incorporate in real-time.
The marriage of well-organized data product workspaces and PowerBI’s user-centric design enables Sarah to be an autonomous data analyst, crafting insights without needing constant IT intervention.
A New Dawn with Data Products
Sarah’s routine is a testament to the transformative nature of modern data products:
Student Performance Tracker: A detailed lens into student assessments
Resource Allocator: Smart recommendations at her fingertips
Engagement Monitor: Offering a pulse on student interactions
Collaboration Hub: Bringing stakeholders together on Azure
By putting the power of custom dashboards and data products into the hands of domain experts like Sarah, we’re paving the way for more informed, agile, and relevant decision-making processes in every field.
EduDataSci - Educating the world about data and leadership 