Overview

The Assessment Data Analytics (ADA) Project (2024-2025), led by the Faculty of Natural Sciences (FoNS) EdTech Team, is exploring how the faculty can extend existing assessment data analytics capabilities and use these to improve current student academic support practices. The project is being conducted within the Life Sciences and Mathematics departments—with a vision to create a scalable, sustainable infrastructure for assessment analytics across Imperial.

Any findings made through this exploratory project will contribute towards the Central Learning Analytics (CLA) Team’s work. The main objective of the project is to provide a foundation/framework to the CLA Team as they develop standard college-wide reports and dashboards. The Project Team has partnered with the Education Office, Life Sciences and Mathematics Faculty, Student Shapers and other stakeholders (Registry, Central Learning Analytics Team), to prototype versions of four potential data tools.

Aims

The project aimed to develop and pilot solutions in the Mathematics and Life Sciences department to streamline the collection and management of data and to create interactive reports. The Team aimed to produce:

  1. Four prototyped data tools, for the two departments
  2. Efficient data collection and management processes to maintain these tools within the Microsoft Azure and Power Apps platforms, utilising data flows, automation and reporting in Power Apps or Power BI and ensuring compatibility with the UDP. We shall work with ICLA and ICT to set up integrations so that marks and assessment details feed into the central LA data infrastructure.
  3. Sets of requirements for implementing the processes and extending the products for use across College. These will be gathered to develop the prototypes and though consultation with other FoNS departments.
  4. A qualitative report on current processes and practices for discussing academic matters in personal tutorials and staff and students’ experiences of these. This will act as a baseline to enable future evaluation of the impact of LA in helping staff to support students. 
  5. User experience data from the pilot delivery of assessment data reports to year convenors and personal tutors in Mathematics and Life Sciences, using locally maintained tutor-tutee data

Our Work

To achieve the aforementioned aims, the Project Team has prototyped tools and streamlined existing processes:

  1. A Student Assessment Dashboard for Personal Tutors in the Life Sciences department, displaying assessments submitted, marks achieved, and skills ratings as extracted from student ePortfolio Journals
  2. A Student-Facing version of the Assessment Dashboard for Life Sciences students—developed in collaboration with Student Shapers
  3. A Module Information Collection Tool developed for the Mathematics department to collect schedules and workloads relating to module assessments, which feed into a schedule and workload visualisation tool
  4. A Module Workload and Schedule Visualisation Tool for Mathematics students that displays assessment weightings and key dates for all modules in a single, interactive dashboard—developed in collaboration with Student Shapers
  5. Streamlined the marks management process for the Mathematics department data management team, by establishing a connection between the UDP and Power Apps, to enable department to gain access to marks in real time

Impact

The abovementioned prototyped data tools aim to support and improve current assessment data capabilities and processes and to enrich the student learning journey by:

  • Promoting sustainable learning practices for students, by encouraging them to make more informed module selections and to manage their time more efficiently
  • Enabling students and faculty to view a snapshot of students’ academic progress in a single, centralised space, allowing them to have more personalised conversations with their tutees
  • Optimising assessment marks management processes by identifying key areas for improvement and making recommendations to standardise practices across departments

Process

The prototyping of data tools has been done through an agile project approach where features were requested and changes were made incrementally, through feedback loops with partners and ongoing redesign processes. The student-facing data prototypes were tested in focus groups and 1-1 user testing sessions by the Student Shapers to validate the discoveries made so far. The faculty-facing prototypes have been—and will continue to be—tested by Module Leads, Year Convenors, and Departments Heads.

Project Approach

Phase I: Planning

To fully understand the requirements for each department, the Project Team conducted Requirements Gathering and Process Mapping sessions with key stakeholders. Current behaviour (workflows, and pain points) and desired behaviour were captured in Whiteboard flowcharts and process maps. These requirements were then created into user stories which underpinned the development work the Project Team undertook (Phase II). The Project Team also familiarised itself with the current data infrastructure and identified primary data sources (where all the relevant data was hosted) during this phase to set a foundation for the next phase. 

Phase II: Design and Development

Once user stories were created and prioritised by the Project Team (in consultation with stakeholders from both departments), wireframes were created to align all stakeholders on the UI/UX for dashboard prototypes. The design process was iterative in nature: early concept wireframes (created in MS PowerPoint) were shared with stakeholders who provided feedback and/or made changes to the design as per department requirements. Each wireframe was attached to a user story. The user stories became steps in key developmental deliverables, captured in MS Planner, time-boxed in two-week sprints.

Priorities were identified at the start of each sprint, the Project Team worked on developing features as identified in the user stories, and achievements were shared at the end of the sprint, and opportunities for future work (based on feedback provided) were identified. Development included data source identification, data ingestion, data cleaning, data analysis and visualisation. The Project Team exported Blackboard data from the UDP (Unified Data Platform, Data Bricks) into two development environments, MS PowerBI and Power Apps. 

Phase III: Testing

Potential testers were identified by the Project Team in collaboration with project stakeholders. Testers were shortlisted and contacted, and were then invited to initial context sessions--in which the team provided an overview of the project and objectives. Following this, each tester received access to the prototype, accompanying resources, and testing scripts. They were then requested to test the prototype in specific environments (in personal tutor sessions) or more generally, and capture their feedback. Once each tester concluded their testing, the Project Team, testers and stakeholders came together in a focus group setting to discuss feedback. 

Phase IV: Feedback and Iteration

Feedback, as provided by the testers in their feedback forms and in the focus group sessions, was collated and analysed. The Project Team identified recurring themes, and other salient thoughts--and used those to create priority lists of actions for the upcoming sprints. The feedback provided informed how upcoming development cycles were structured. Once development was completed, the same feedback loop was implemented. The project is inherently iterative in nature, so the team followed a repetitive pattern of development, feedback, and analysis.

Phase V: Review and Evaluation

The Project Team, after receiving effective feedback from the intitial rounds of testing and actioning said feedback, will look towards piloting some of the tools prototyped in the new year -- to gauge how students and faculty interact with the prototypes in a controlled environment and what value addition the prototypes.

Project Presentations and Resources

FOLAT Presentation - ADA March 2025

LA Community of Practice - ADA Project and PowerApps Showcase

Contact us

Get in touch with the EdTech Lab and AV Support Team:

fonslt@imperial.ac.uk 

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