Scientific Visualisation of Student Records

Dino Cevolatti

As a matter of course school teachers must collect records of student conduct and
achievement and make use of these student records in planning, practice and
reporting. Scientific Visualisation is a family of techniques for generating and
interpreting graphical representations of data that highlight simpler patterns across
complex sets of data. Teachers are often under pressure to ensure that standards of
speed, accuracy and thoroughness of their student records are maintained. The use of
personal computers has on the one hand eased the management of student records but
it has also amplified that amount of data that is considered reasonable for teachers to
be required to maintain. Scientific Visualisation could therefore be applied to the vast
collections of student records that teachers may feel are being underutilised or even
discarded prematurely.

Often once data has been used to make a judgement for, planning, practice, or
reporting (i.e., assessment for, assessment as, or assessment as learning) it is put into
static storage or worse discarded. Once transformed into a summary statistics or
descriptive comment the data is often considered merely evidence in case of a dispute.
However by pooling data together over longer periods of time Scientific Visualisation
can be used to allow more data to be actively utilised and contribute to decisions for
much longer periods of time. Furthermore, Scientific Visualisation techniques can
also be used to answer questions that the data was not initially intended to be used to
answer: relationships among different aspects of student conduct and achievement can
be explored and surprising patterns can be discovered. Much of the information
obtained from scientific visualisation will be specific to the conduct and achievement
of the teacher and can therefore be of great use as a tool for reflection on practice.
Students can also be given access to the student data to keep them informed of their
progress and the reporting processes that they are subject to. In this way, the data
collected in student records can be fed-back and recycled to maintain its use in
planning, practice, and reporting (i.e., assessment for, assessment as, and assessment
as learning).
What to record?
- attendance
- academic progress
-
- effort
- organisation
- behaviour