This exploratory qualitative study examined how instructional designers use data to make decisions during the instructional design process. Participants included full-time instructional designers (n = 9) who were involved in one or more phases of the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) across different job sectors,…

While research on Learning Analytics (LA) is plentiful, it often prioritises perspectives on LA systems over the practical ways instructors use data to analyse and refine the learning process per se. The present study addresses this inadequacy by investigating how student data is employed by educators in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and…

Data preparation (also called "wrangling" or "cleaning") -- the evaluation and manipulation of data prior to formal analysis -- is often dismissed as a precursor to meaningful engagement with a dataset. Here, we re-envision data preparation in light of calls to prepare students for a data-rich world. Traditionally, curricular…

This manuscript describes the use of real data applied to a fictional real-estate firm for teaching data visualization to university students. In the case study, students employ data analytic techniques in Tableau to clean, organize, and analyze real estate data. By creating visualizations, students address several questions about how selling…

Choices made on data visualizations guide how users make meaning of the information presented. This research investigates design decisions made on 115 state-level dashboards reporting school safety data. Using pre-determined codes drawn from a framework of visualization rhetoric, dashboard characteristics were described and analyzed. Analysis…

Data visualizations have proliferated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to communicate information about the crisis and influence policy development and individual decision-making. In invoking exponential growth, mathematical modelling, statistical analysis, and the like, these data visualizations invite opportunities for mathematics teaching and…

Out-of-school-time (OST) programs and their funders rely on sound data to make decisions about everything from professional development and student recruitment to the selection of activities to offer students. Programs operate at a range of times (before and after school, weekends, summer) and in a variety of locations (e.g., schools,…

This toolkit is designed to guide educators in developing and improving practical measurement instruments for use in networked improvement communities (NICs) and other education contexts in which principles of continuous improvement are applied. Continuous improvement includes distinct repeating processes: understanding the problem, identifying…

Data-informed decision-making in teachers' practice, now recommended by different teacher inquiry models and policy documents, implies deep practice change for many teachers. However, not much is known about how teachers perceive the different steps that analytics-informed teacher inquiry entails. This paper presents the results of a study into…

This project reviews data collection practices regarding race, ethnicity and ancestry (REA) in post-secondary institutions (PSIs) in Canada, as well as in other relevant sectors (e.g., health, K-12 education, government agencies). The goal of the project was to identify promising practices and to develop recommendations to guide REA data…

"Using Education Indicators: A Forum Guide for State and Local Education Agencies" was developed to provide timely and useful information on education indicators, how their collection and use have changed over time, and how agencies use them strategically. Since the publication of the 2005 document "Forum Guide to Education…

While an increased number of industries with business operations have been shaping their use of data analytics, the use of such tools and methods within the higher education research domain, specifically research administration, is still in its infancy. This mixed-methods study collected data to identify best practices in how universities and…

Quantitative decision making (management science, business statistics) textbooks rarely address data cleansing issues, rather, these textbooks come with neat, clean, well-formatted data sets for the student to perform analysis on. However, with a majority of the data analyst's time spent on gathering, cleaning, and pre-conditioning data, students…

The Private School Universe Survey (PSS) is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to collect basic information on American private elementary and secondary schools. PSS is currently designed to generate biennial data on the total number of private schools, teachers, and…

In this paper, we explore the design of a student-facing dashboard for online and distance learning with a focus on capturing and addressing specific learning needs. A participatory process involving 20 students was employed, which included a screening questionnaire and focus group discussions. The selection of data points to be displayed on the…