In an era of test-driven accountability, the word “data” frightens many educators. But “if we train school leaders in evidence-based analytics, it can lead to a creative, collaborative conversation around what matters,” Alex Bowers, Associate Professor of Education Leadership, told attendees at the Education Leadership Data Analytics (ELDA) Summit he chaired at TC in June.
Learning analytics is the science of probing data generated by the proliferation of online smart teaching systems. ELDA can help school leaders identify and address longer-term problems — drop-out risks, unsuccessful program approaches — but only if they are “co-conspirators” with data scientists, said keynote speaker Andrew Krumm, author of Learning Analytics Goes to School: A Collaborative Approach to Improving Education.
“If we train school leaders in evidence-based analytics, it can lead to a creative, collaborative conversation around what matters.”
— Alex Bowers, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership
In workshops at Summit Public Schools, the California-based charter network, Bowers and Krumm used a data visualization technique called cluster heat mapping to show math teachers that students were repeatedly testing themselves on exponential and linear functions — a clear sign that those concepts were proving difficult. The teachers decided to spend extra time on those units.
Alex Bowers, Associate Professor of Education Leadership
Gary Natriello, TC’s Ruth L. Gottesman Professor in Education Research, urged data scientists to ease up on jargon, cautioning that for many lay folk, the field of analytics remains “incomprehensible.”
And Miriam Greenberg, Director of Education and Communications for the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research, said that classroom educators will trust data more if they have a say in designing data systems and determining what data is most useful: “You have to get people the information they need.”