A Love Letter to the Learning Analytics Suite.

I want to give some context about the product first, and the value it offers our users.

I'm very passionate about the value that TrackOne Studio offers, and hopefully by sharing the things that I love about it, I can pass on some of that passion to you.

I love that the Learning Analytics Suite is a single place to collate a huge amount of school data.

(Having worked in schools, I say yay for fewer spreadsheets!)

I love the way we collate students' historic and current academic data, because it allows school staff to identify trends in the students’ learning journeys. They want the tools to check that students are improving over time, and if students are starting to struggle, they want a way to identify this ASAP, so that strategies can be put in place for support and improvement.

I love the many, many ways that academic data is presented for analysis, because it helps teachers and school leaders to look at what they're doing, identify where they could be doing better, and then monitor if the strategies they put in place produce the results they are expecting.

I love that the Suite allows external data to sit alongside internal result data. Schools pay a lot of money for all sorts of standardised and diagnostic assessments, and they want to collate it all into a single location where meaningful connections can be made. TrackOne Studio does this very well.

I love that we don't collect just academic data though; we include plenty of other data in the Suite to help create a more complete picture of each student.

I love that we collect absence data, because making connections between student results and their attendance is super important, particularly where students are struggling academically and have high absenteeism.

I love that we look at behavioural data, both positive and negative, because it provides further information about the students. Whether a student shows a lot of disciplinary type activity, or a lot of merit type activity, helps the teacher to understand how they can best prepare for and support their students in achieving their best outcomes.

I love that we include extra-curricular data for students - sports, bands, choir, volunteering, hobbies etc., because so much value is gained from these activities, and this involvement helps shape the students into the individuals that they are. 

A classroom is full of pretty cool humans, each with their own interests and passions, and it's helpful to include this data in the overall picture of the students.

I love that teachers can look up their classes in the Suite and see all of this data about their students, because it helps them to understand each student, and the many factors that have contributed in making them who they are. It helps them to make decisions about how to best teach that particular group of students.

I love that teachers can access great summaries of all this data for each one of their students, because it helps them to have informed conversations with parents at interview times. 

(Facts are king when dealing with parents!)

I love that head teachers and curriculum leaders can monitor student performance in a variety of ways, by individual classes, by subject, or for entire year levels. 

They do all sorts of analysis on this stuff, and they love it!

I love our Student Pathways module, which asks students to reflect on their results, and then set goals for the next period of time, because it means they are more involved and invested in their learning.

I love our Wellbeing module, where schools survey students to find out how they're feeling about things overall, because it gives students the opportunity to reach out for help if they need it. 

I love that pastoral staff can monitor the students' 'Wellbeing Scores', because it means they can identify students who are struggling, and over time, monitor for significant changes in a students' score. 

I love that we can send email notifications regarding students of concern, what we call 'Focus Students '. These are students whose results slip to a concerning level, or their absenteeism reaches into the high numbers, or their wellbeing scores drop too low. It flags these students so that help can be provided to them, so they don't 'slip through the cracks '.

Have I mentioned the Awards module yet? What a time saver this is for schools! Gone are the spreadsheets trying to work out which students should get an award because they got more than 5 As, or the highest result across 3 subjects, or perfect attendance and all of their results above a B...I'm sure you can imagine the headaches this would cause trying to work all of this out. For. Every. Year level!

I love that we can set these parameters up in the Suite, and each year they simply hit the 'Generate' button to produce the awards lists.

I love that our Suite is not JUST for school staff; and if schools wish to, they can activate the parent and student portals, so that they too can access the wealth of information.

Long before me, the founders of TrackOne had a vision. I don't know if it was written down, but when I look at this product that they produced, I just think 'wow, how good is it!'

So, our vision...

Moving forward, we want to keep all that's currently in the Suite, and do a few more things to make it even better.

We aim to:

- meet the needs of our clients in a changing landscape

- grow the value that the Suite offers

- ensure that the Suite is sustainable in future

- ensure that usability and user value is at the core of all product development

I'll finish with one of my favourite quotes that I love to hear, and I've heard it a few times from different schools, and it's this: "Our teachers love TrackOne Studio."

It's both humbling and exciting to be involved with the future of this product.

Deb Ferdinands
TrackOne Studio Product Owner