2. What is Business Intelligence (BI)
and How Can it be Used in New
Zealand Public Primary and
Secondary Schools ?
By Corlene Greenwood
ID No: 9910887
3. The Aim of Business Intelligence is to….
Raise Student Achievement
Improve Student Learning
Manage School Functionality to Meet these Needs
4. Mr Bizzy, the School Chief Flossie the New Entrant Student
Administrator
Miss Sunshine, the Teacher
Flossie's Parents, Ma and
Pa Kettle
5. What is Data Warehousing?
It is a database used for reporting and data
analysis. It is a central location for storing data
created by combining data from multiple
independent sources. Data warehouses store
current as well as historical data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database
6. LOGISTICS
HUMAN RESOURCES
ORDER
REPORTS
DATA WAREHOUSE PROCESSING
PROCUREMENT CUSTOMER
CARE
7.
8. Business Intelligence
“….is a broad group of applications and technologies. First,
the term refers to the systems and technologies for
gathering, cleansing, consolidating, and storing corporate
data. Next, business intelligence relates to the tools,
techniques, and applications for analyzing the stored data….
a BI setting takes data as the raw material, collects it,
refines it, and processes it into several information products
(Ponniah, 2010, p. 18).
9. Software Applications
Medical software
Business Software i.e. MYOB
Recreational software i.e.
gaming, painting, Photoshop
Personal software i.e. Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.
Education software
10. Online Applications
Social Networking i.e. Facebook, Dating sites, Blogs,
Skyping
Intranet i.e. the company’s OWN secured private
site
Ultranet i.e. a secure Learning Management System for
parents, students, and teachers to communicate.
Trading, Job Searching, Banking, Communication,
Library, Entertainment (Youtube) etc.
Educational i.e. KAMAR, Etap, MUSAC, TKI, ARB, nzmaths, etc.
11. The aim of Business Intelligence (BI) is to gain a
competitive edge. For example, in Business you
want to have data and knowledge about
particular events, and things that have occurred
recently, in real time, and in the past too.
There is nothing more embarrassing than not
having up to date knowledge, or being able to
predict behaviours of events that can be
planned for………… DON’T GET CAUGHT OUT!!
18. Strategic Business Intelligence Allows YOU
to Think Smarter – Not Harder!
Cluster Detection
Operational Reporting
Adhoc Reporting
OLAP and OLTP analysis
Dashboards and Graphic User Interface (GUI)
20. HUMAN
RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Staffing, Admin,
etc.
LEARNING
RESOURCES
NZQA, e-asTTle, TKI
THE STUDENT PARENT
Attendance, PORTALS
Learning, Results
Pastoral Care,
Personal
Information
21. Benefits and Limitations
PROS CONS
Federated DWs enhances BI SMS integration and Lack of staff training, making the process longer
accessibility suitable for the nature of all the to implement as learning is self-taught
schools in New Zealand
Efficient and effective transferral of documents e-Maturity amongst staff is variable
between schools.
Users can make well defined predictions of Parent Portals not being used effectively due to
resources and funding through day to day geographical internet connectivity
management and trend identification
Cluster detection allows intervention and Any discrepancies between BI SMS are due to
enhancement of continual undesired behaviours lack of vendor upgrades, support, obstacles with
and events. creating teaching and learning materials etc.
BI allows better reporting procedures where Managing usernames and passwords for multiple
users are able to personalise and tailor learning environments is an obstacle to students,
information and reports parents, teachers, support staff etc.
Most importantly data can be personalised to
enquire, to predict, and to plan ahead in a child’s
learning with aim to improve their learning, and
raise their achievement.
Good afternoon, welcome, my name is __ and I will be delivering to you this presentation about _____<CLICK>
To begin with, I understand that my audience is made up of a combination of parents and caregivers – teachers - Support teaching staff, and Board of Trustee Members.<CLICK>Therefore the aim of this presentation is to help audience members understand how Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing helps to <CLICK>raise student achievement, <CLICK> improve student learning, <CLICK>and manage school functionality to meet these needs.To help you in your learning journey here, I have employed a couple of assistants that will help you in understanding specific situations and scenarios that will be mentioned later on in this presentation……………………… so…………… I’d like to introduce to you the school’s chief administrator, Mr Bizzy………………..
Next we have our latest new entrant student, “Flossie,” followed by Miss Sunshine the Teacher, and finally Flossie’s parents, Ma and Pa Kettle.
O.k. So, going back to the drawing board,what is data warehousing?Data warehousing is a is a database used for reporting and data analysis. It is a central location for storing data created by combining data or integrating data from multiple disparatesources. Data warehouses store current as well as historical data and are commonly used by senior management for creating trend reports,OR by end users wishing to get an in depth report to compare, predict, and identify patterns in events or things in real time, or in the past.
OK so here we have our data warehouse for a regular business….. Here you can see is our central repository of data <CLICK> dwshowsAs previously mentioned, this is created by integrating data <CLICK> Arrows - From multiple disparate sources. It is a central repository of data which is created by integrating data from multiple disparate sources. Data warehouses store current as well as historical data and are commonly used for creating trend reports for senior management reporting such as annual and quarterly comparisons.The data stored in the warehouse are uploaded from the operational systems (such as order processing, customer care, and sales etc., shown in the figure to the right). The data may pass through an operational data store for additional operations before they are used in the DW for reporting.
Now let’s refocus again on our leading topic…………………….
<REFER TO SLIDE DEFINITION FIRST>So I hear you saying, what the heck are applications and technologies? This is very simple -- you have two different forms of applications which are SOFTWARE, and ONLINE
Something to think about there……
So, what does business intelligence look like in education? Now lets ask Flossie to join us here <CLICK>………………………..Imagine what Flossie and her parents went through in enrolling her in a large city school. When Flossie enrolled, the school collectednot only personal information about her from <CLICK> Ma and Pa Kettle, but they took along hundreds of bits of paper<CLICK> Birth certs – Vaccinations - NSI numbers - Records of attendance, achievements, and learning focus areas from the last school in which Flossie last attended, or the Early Childcare Education centre – that’s if she’s a new entrant. <CLICK>ALL THOSE BITS OF PAPER PILE UP …………………………………..HUGELY
YES this can all seem a little overwhelming
Now I want you to put yourself in the shoes of the administrator Mr Bizzy, who works at the new school where Flossy just enrolled in. Day in and day out he has to find out the school attendance rate, rather than go through the attendance register <CLICK> manually Mr Bizzydecides to use a Business Intelligence tool to collect all that informationonline. The use of a BI tool allows the information to be regularly rolled up and formatted just right so that Mr Bizzy can make well informed decisions about planning, staffing, property allocations, and funding. Anothergood example of how Mr Bizzy uses BI tools on a daily basis, is extracting attendance numbers to order food for the breakfast club the next day……… Orextracting information on whether Mrs Sunshine turned up to school this week, to ensure she is paid correctly. ORwhether shares can be better distributed between departments to help upgrade the student learning centre. Now the administrator can make a better educated decision about expenditure.
O.k. now lets ask Miss Sunshine to join us….. <CLICK> Miss Sunshine has just completed a Geometry test with her class. However, her latest test results show that class performance wasn’t as good as she expected it to be. <CLICK> How can Miss Sunshine use BI to answer this?BI can compare trends, and clusters in outcomes (results). More specifically, it will identify groups of students who show similar patterns, over time. It will also identify any similar attributes that those students shared, and any surrounding issues that may have attributed to their failures. Here are some common attributes that Miss Sunshine identified through BI clustering: absenteeism, and truancies,learning disordersThat the student has underperformed in all learning areas this school term, repeated behavioural problems, and so forthWith this information, Miss Sunshine can get a better understanding of her class, their learning issues, and better prepare for them, OR apply for special needs education assistance.
Cluster Detection detects clusters of students by particular demographics, achievements, attendances and so forth, itsalgorithm searches for groups or clusters of data elements that are similar to one another. For example, if we were to ask what works in Primary schools for Maori and Pasifika students, and under what conditions? We would use strategic BI to identify clusters of successful Maori and Pasifika students that have achieved. From here we can identify attributes, and trends in data. This data can then be used to predict further success rates, it could also be utilised as an intervention to assist those that do not share the same attributes. Operational Reporting. This is similarto the report card that a student brings home at the end of term. It gives a very structured account of how data is to be interpreted by the parent, or end user (Intricity101, 2011). Adhoc Reporting provides users with the ability to personalise information and ask any kind of question linked to any type of data in the warehouse. It empowers decisions makers with the freedom to tailor any report. OLAP and OLTP analysis. Many of the tools that link with OLAP and OLTP resemble more like data navigation tools than report authoring tools. OLAPS such as MUSAC staffing, are complementary to Relational Dimensional ModelsDashboards and Graphic User Interface (GUI) screens possess a high level view of an organisation. This keeps the teacher from having to manually search through hundreds of reports and data elements within the SMS. If a problem appears on the dashboard, the teacher can drill into the alert to get a more detailed report. Frequently’ dashboards are arrangements of the delivery methods discussed above.
In schools BI applications are better known as SMS. Not all schools use the same SMS - instead, there is a mix and match approach. This is partly due to costs, needs, and length of time the school has locked in with that vendor, plus much more. As seen here, MUSAC/Symphony is highly popular in 2011…… the statistics were very different ten years ago, when teachers complained of its limitation in scope and ability. This graph paints a different picture. As different applications are upgraded and scalability and storage increases, so does its popularity. In addition, some schools operate on dial-up or on a single pc, other schools have elaborate networking/server systems – but one things for sure, they are all able to utilise the many different types of SMS available regardless of internet ability.
Because schools are able to mix and match the BI tools they wish to use, the data warehouse architecture is a Federated structure. It displays the flow of data in and out of each BI tool, and how it can be accessed freely by the users. Users can drill down, roll up, and aggregate data from all directions within its own BI or another BI application, and then create personalised reports from there. As Ponniah, (2010) stated, “The practical solution is a federated architectural type where data may be physically or logically integrated through shared key fields, overall global metadata, distributed queries, and such other methods. In this architectural type, there is no one overall data warehouse.” Because there is no single data warehouse, the individual applications are self-sufficient providing their own individual data warehouses instead. The effectiveness and efficiency of the BI tools have been questionable by a number of teachers from the observed schools (Tapora, TKKMoN, and Rodney College). For instance, when creating reports in KAMAR, user rights and privileges inhibit them from making corrections or amendments to reports, as a result new reports are created, and an excess of redundant data is left on the system. Alternately, eTAP has come a long way. It too used to be like this, but now appears more user friendly, with more help options, and reliable communication with vendor support teams. ………. Which brings me to summarise with a quick rundown of the benefits and limitations of BI in Education……
Benefits and Limitations The following list details limitations experienced, and observed from each of the above schools. Annotations have been given in some instances:It was noted from several teachers that the heads of departments don’t get the time to train staff, making the process longer to implement as learning is self-taught. In addition, e-Maturity amongst staff is variable. There are still a number of teachers and support staff who don’t know how to operate a computer or lack confidence in using the SMS. This also accounts for parents living in the rural areas who are still operating from wireless connections. They aren’t using the parent portals available in the SMSs because of this.Any discrepancies between BI SMS tools/vendors are due to lack of vendor upgrades, support, obstacles with creating teaching and learning materials etc. (i.e. when creating reports in KAMAR, user rights and privileges inhibit them from making corrections or amendments to reports, as a result new reports are created, and a whole lot of redundant data is left on the system. Alternately, eTAP appears slightly more user friendly, with more help options, and reliable communication with vendor support teams).Managing usernames and passwords for each learning environment is an obstacle to students, parents, teachers, support staff etc.The identified benefits: Federated Data Warehousing allows each individual BI SMS tool the ability to be integrated and accessed better with the implementation of SRT. BI enables better transferral of documents between schools.BI allows users the ability to predict resources and funding through day to day management and trend identification.The use of Cluster detection allows intervention and enhancement of continual undesired behaviours and events.BI allows better reporting procedures where users are able to personalise and tailor information and reports.Most importantly data can be personalised to enquire, to predict, and to plan ahead in a child’s learning with aim to improve their learning, and raise their achievement.
In summary, in accordance with the above, <CLICK> the benefits far outweigh the limitations. Some of the limitations go back to the responsibility of the school implementing the BI SMS tools. To achieve the role of BI in education, teachers and support staff must be formally trained and supported in implementation, deployment, and maintenance. This would also raise confidence in e-Maturity. In addition, the issue of wireless/broadband availability will hopefully resolve itself as cabling is laid down in those remote areas, hence the lack of internet diffusion to that population. SRT aims to bridge together each of the individual BI SMS tools by the end of 2012 – one would hope it resolves the issue with separate passwords and usernames for each application. The better the interoperability between SMS and LMS (as well as other platforms) the more effectively we are in meeting our students' needs. Finally, BI SMS does allow educators the ability to fulfil their intended role, thus meeting their set purposes outlined in, ‘The Role of BI.’ <CLICK>