We solve: Opo-tools will catch the dropouts
Marjo Keckman, Student Counsellor of Faculty of Service Business, approached me last spring. She has been wondering how to find more agile ways to analyse the data of the business students’ guidance counselling. The search for information in the Loki-database was slow and laborious. The students who were about to fall behind were difficult to track. Those in need of guidance may not have been found in time. Could we utilize the knowledge management in guidance counselling? Could we find new solutions for guiding students and their learning?
We analysed the need:
- Updated data once a month. The relevant data will be updated at the time when the grades are given.
- Filtering the data of the target group (students of Faculty of Service Business).
- Easy to read, agile and illustrative visualizations.
- Deepening the individual student’s data.
We decided to utilise MS Power BI as an application. After careful development and verification, the Opo-tool was launched to analyse the student data.
With Opo-tool you are able to identify the students in danger to drop out at one glance. You can find the failed study modules as well as the ones having difficulties to pass by filtering the student data. The specific information can be picked up easily and quickly with versatile filtering and illustrative visualization. With the same tool the tutoring teacher can follow the progress of students' studies as a group and agilely to identify the students having delays in their progress. The aim is to ensure that as many students as possible can complete their studies.
Analysis of data with Power BI is addictive and appetite comes with eating. When you find the solution to the problem, you'll see the next issue and vision of how to solve it. During use and development, we had an idea - Whether the Opo-tool could benefit others? What kind of data model would serve the whole SAMK?
We have a four-person development team. In addition to myself and Keckman, the team consists of Jukka Mäkinen Head of Teaching of Faculty of Service Business, and Esa Rahiala Specialist of Financial and Administration Services. The strength of this multi-professional teamwork is the creation of ideas from different perspectives. With this same team, we will continue the development work to design a common tool for SAMK. The aim is to develop a data model for knowledge management of guidance counselling.