cmd-017. a suite of online dashboards that give all members of an organization access to actionable information.

case studiesdata visualization

Jun 5

Written By David White

PROJECT COMPLETED: February 2020

Harlem Link Data Suite: Academics | Data Pipeline and Reporting System by David White — **Harlem Link Data Suite: Academics** | Data Pipeline and Reporting System by David White

THE STORY OF THIS PROJECT

Stakeholder’s Problem: “We need a way to quickly compile, analyze and report on our school’s data.”

Harlem Link Charter School is a tuition-free, independent charter school located in New York City. It serves 450 children in Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 5. Harlem Link is committed to equitable programming, inclusiveness and serving all children in its community (Harlem and Washington Heights).

At Harlem Link, students take a series of assessments throughout the school year to monitor their academic progress. The assessments produce a large volume of data that needs to be collected, crunched and reported on within a short window of time. In order to meet that challenge, I took the following steps:

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Case Study 017. Harlem Link Data Suite - Academics: Step 1

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Step 1 - Discovery

To begin the process of creating the data reports, I met with the school’s teachers and administrators. I listened to the concerns they had and the challenges they were facing. I began to form an idea of what information needed to be included in the data reports and what raw data needed to be gathered.

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Case Study 017. Harlem Link Data Suite - Academics: Step 2

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Step 2 - Sketch

Next, I made a rough sketch of what the reports would look like and what information would go where on the screen.

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Case Study 017. Harlem Link Data Suite - Academics: Step 3

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Step 3 - Prep Data

To complete this step, I took the following actions:

I identified exactly what data needed to be displayed.
I identified sources for each of those data points.
I exported that data from school information systems (or requested a data export from an outside source).
I cleaned up and organized the data exports.
I compiled the data into Google Sheets.

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Case Study 017. Harlem Link Data Suite - Academics: Step 4

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Step 4 - Build

Next, I took the Google Sheets datasources I’d just compiled and I connected them to Google Data Studio. I began to build out the reports inside of Data Studio.

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Case Study 017. Harlem Link Data Suite - Academics: Step 5

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School

Step 5 - Publish

I published the finished reports to the cloud using Google Data Studio and I shared them with all stakeholders. Since the documents were based online, all members of the team could review the data prior to their team meetings and arrive prepared to contribute to the group discussion.

CSY-017., Harlem Link Charter School