Forsyth County Schools – Data Driven Dashboard – An Evolutionary Process
With close to 31,000 students and 4,000 employees in 30 schools, Forsyth County Schools is a fast-growth system that has developed a culture that supports the use of the three stages of data-driven decision making: collection, analysis, and action, to support student achievement. The system is “data-driven,” with formal collection, management and analysis of data being used to increase student academic performance, as well as staff training opportunities and development. Additionally, Forsyth County Schools utilizes a centralized data management office, which houses all student and operational records and the student registration center, and maintains communication with stakeholders through various electronic tools.
In the spring of 2008, Forsyth County Schools enhanced their community-led strategic plan by rolling out a special data collection and analysis tool called the R4 Dashboard. Standing for “Rigor + Relevance + Relationships = Results,” the R4 Dashboard is the first system of its kind in Georgia because of its use of “real time” data shown in “gauges” similar to those found on the dashboard of an automobile. With the implementation of the R4 Dashboard, data collected from every department within the system is readily available to all staff and the community through the system’s website, www.forsyth.k12.ga.us.
“Balanced scorecard data from strategic planning is typically static in nature – like a printed document. By providing trend and current data and information in graphic form online, we increase the clarity of our message. Many corporations use such a tool but only highly technological school systems are even considering them,” said Superintendent L.C. (Buster) Evans.
Forsyth County Schools – Data Driven Dashboard – an evolutionary process:
We just launched our new R4 Dashboard: http://r4dashboard.forsyth.k12.ga.us
The Original R4 Dashboard Draft Document - Excel Originally, in December 2007 it was drafted as a single Excel file, with departments and their measurement criteria listed as rows, and columns set up for school year 2006, 2007, and 2008. It had the classic Balanced Scorecard look and feel and it was good for summarizing data in a document/chart format. But it very busy and text intensive, and individual departments were entering comments, exceptions, and instructions into cells that should contain numbers only, or restructuring rows and columns to fit their own needs.
Planning to present this information to our stakeholders in the Spring of 2008, Bailey Mitchell, Chief Technology and Information Officer and our Superintendent, Dr. Buster Evans, both agreed that the data needed to be presented in a more graphical format, with charts displaying the data visually for easier interpretation.
Buster provided us some examples of Dashboard scorecards that he'd seen used by businesses, and asked us to look into how we might make that happen.
Business Objects Xcelsius
We looked into some options and then came across Business Objects' Xcelsius 2007 product (http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/xcelsius/default.asp). Business Objects is the company that also makes Crystal Reports.
Xcelsius uses standard Microsoft Excel charts as a source, imports the Excel data into a chart design tool, creates a chart model that integrates the Excel file for dynamic and interactive presentation, and allows the chart model to be exported as a standard Adobe Flash file. The Flash file can then be used as an animated graphic embedded in web pages.
The Design Process
Our design and development team consisted of three people:
* Sue Derison (Director of Information Systems), * Lakeisha Inoni (an Information Systems Specialist), and * Peter Wilkens (an Information Systems Specialist).
Lakeisha has a strong background in web graphics design and development, and Peter has an extensive background with application development and graphics as well. This allowed us to hit the ground running and develop both the presentation graphics and underlying application structure in parallel, both of aware of how we would need to make the elements fit together in the end.
Our team brainstormed what the R4 Dashboard might look like, dividing up the data into meaningful sections, sub-sections, and individual performance charts. We reviewed and adjusted this design in collaboration with the R4 Dashboard Committee and included Dr. Evans, to work out as much of the final design as possible before any actual coding began. We also prototyped some of the graphics look and feel.
It was also decided that we wanted data providers to have the ability to enter their data into Excel at any time. Originally, we tried to mirror the look and feel of the Balanced Scorecard file, so that departments could enter their data into a form they were already familiar with, and we would use that file as a source for all of our charts. However, this created an Xcelsius model and subsequent Flash file that was excessively large, and as departments fleshed out what data they really wanted to provide, several maintainability issues quickly became apparent.
Instead, we decided to create a data entry template in Excel, and copy the exact same template design for each chart in the system. To make it easy for users to locate their data entry templates, we created a small VB.NET application that used the same menu structure as the R4 Dashboard design, that could be used to navigate to each chart and automatically open the data entry template in Excel.
Each data entry template then became the source for a matching Xcelsius chart model. We came up with a basic design template for the chart model that we could use as a starting point for each chart.
The Web Application
We created about 90 different Xcelsius chart models, and each of these was exported to a matching .SWF Flash file. Then we created a web application using Adobe Dreamweaver, primarily for the graphics navigation part of the dashboard, with each Flash file embedded into an appropriate HTML web page.
In some cases, we had to embed multiple Xcelsius charts into a single combination chart. Fortunately, Xcelsius also allows you to embed graphics into the chart model, and that can include other Xcelsius-generated Flash files as well. We used this for screens where there were multiple chart variations of the same topic (such as CRCT Reading scores for All Students, English Learners, and Students with Disabilities).
The Results
By using Xcelsius and our modular chart-by-chart approach, we were able to quickly realize the dashboard design and generate a working web application. It is visually appealing and also relatively quick to refresh each page.
The only disappointing aspect of Xcelsius 2007 was that it didn't keep a dynamic connection to the Excel file. As users make changes to their data templates, their changes do not automatically refresh the resulting Flash files. We need to manually re-import each Excel file into the corresponding chart model then manually re-export the chart as a Flash file. Business Objects does offer an "Enterprise" version of the product which keeps the dynamic connection, but that solution also uses Microsoft Sharepoint as a platform, which immediately takes the overall complexity and system and administration requirements to a significantly higher level, one that we wanted to avoid.
A few weeks ago, Business Objects released a new version of Xcelsius 2008. As the R4 Dashboard evolves and expands, we'll be looking at how we can address these needs using the new features of Xcelsius 2008, which includes enhanced integration of the Excel source data, an enhanced design interface, some new charting options, and also a developer's SDK toolkit for automating data source connections.
Bailey Mitchell, Chief Technology and Information Officer,bmitchell@forsyth.k12.ga.us