While the public is still debating what information about the students’ achievements the parents, the school and the society should know, KTU researchers and businesses focused on finding practical solutions. Educators, psychologists, data analysis specialists and information technology professionals work together to create an analytics tool for schools.
This tool will help schools to monitor the general situation of their students’ achievements, provide insights into changes in achievements, signal about unusual or unfavorable trends in achievements, changed or attention-demanding behavior of students. Such insights will help school administrators make appropriate decisions, and teachers will better understand the situation of the classroom and each student, thereby more tailoring teaching methods and content to students.
“This tool will help digitize, simplify and automate the essential tasks of school managers and teachers related to student achievement data, their analysis and summarization,” says Tomas Urbonas, head of the IT solutions company “Sonaro” leading the development of the tool, KTU Informatics Faculty alumnus
T. Urbonas notes that so far no automated solution has been developed that would allow summarizing a wide range of data about students, including students’ grades, assessments of national tests, data on student behavior, social environment, accidents, teacher’s influence in evaluating student achievements.
“The tool we are developing is unique in that the system will be able to predict the student’s expected results by using the capabilities of artificial intelligence, evaluating different types of historical student data. This type of system will make it possible to predict in advance what kind of exam results a student can expect if his behavior, such as grades, attendance, other characteristics, does not change,” says T. Urbonas.
However, the tool will not only play a supporting role in the work of school leaders and teachers. KTU Faculty of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts team leader, senior researcher dr. Rasa Erentaitė hopes that this tool will change the attitude of the schools themselves and society towards what value consistent monitoring and meaningful analysis of their students’ achievements can bring to the school.
“When creating this tool, we want to highlight the value of achievement data for the school – it is an opportunity for schools to assess their own situation taking into account the context, students’ previous achievements, applied managerial or educational solutions, and choose the most appropriate directions for further work,” says Dr. R. Erentaitė.
Having a detailed analysis, the schools themselves will be able to decide what they want to emphasize when publicizing the results of their work, what they consider to be an important contribution to the achievements of students. This will change the approach of using student achievement data to compare schools with each other and to compile public rankings.
“Currently, schools that lead in absolute achievement scores are recognized, but schools that help struggling students rise to the top remain in the shadows. With the help of this tool, schools will be able to both see for themselves and show others their added value,” says Dr. R. Erentaitė.
The team assembled for the project already has experience in developing digital tools for schools. KTU researchers are developing the NO-GAP tool for monitoring student achievement gaps ( https://nogap-lida.dataverse.lt ), and the Sonaro company is developing SONARO EDU, an information system for effective school management.
The two-year project is co-financed by the European Union, and together with EU funds, the investment in the tool will reach 1 million. Eur
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