Abstract:

An analytical ashboard is the bridge between learning analysis technology and users in education. It is responsible for presenting the analysis results to users in the most reasonable visual way.

This paper introduces an analytical dashboard for comparing the universities’ entry qualifications on students’ final degree classifications. Initially, the proposed software provides an online questionnaire. This function is designed for universities lecturers or official staff to easily share the online questionnaire and collect students’ educational data. The system automatically provides data storage and processing, and data visualisations for the analysis of the qualifications’ results at entry in UK (like GCSE, A-levels, BTEC, etc.) and in China (like Gaokao). Particularly, the potential users (like lecturers, admin staff, and students) have the opportunity a) to have an overview of qualifications’ results at entry and to compare with the final degree classifications, b) to review the modules’ results and to make comparisons with the final degree classifications, c) to compare the qualifications’ results at entry with the modules’ results. In addition, filters like the fluctuation over academic years, tabs for choosing different visualisation type (like bar chart, line chart, radar chart), and tables to summarise the data, provide options for advanced comparisons and detailed analysis. The purpose is to help teachers intuitively understand the impact of students' entry qualification on students’ final degree classifications, as well as to identify weaknesses in teaching and to make improvements.

The proposed analytical dashboard is a web-based software, and the implementation process mainly consisted of building a database, implementing the user interface and APIs. A series of programming languages and tools have been used, including MySQL, PHP, JavaScript.

Students with different entry qualifications from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications have participated to verify the dashboard functions and to carry out meaningful analysis. The results of the sample data reveal that students from different categories of qualifications, appear to have different degree classification than those at entry.

Future work will be devoted to broadening the dimensions of data analysis, providing more comparison abilities and customised filters.

Keywords:

Analytical dashboard, higher education, entry qualifications, final degree classification, learning analytics.