Methodist Ladies’ College is building a supportive school community with real-time data insights

A Melbourne girls’ school is inviting parents to become more involved in their children’s learning – using technology to give them a “real-time” view of how things are going in the classroom. 

Methodist Ladies’ College (MLC) is using a Microsoft Power BI data visualisation to share a range of information about students’ progress in a user-friendly format. 

IT Applications Manager, Peter Collas, and Director of Learning & Curriculum, Tim Macdonald, have created a new ‘Continuous Reporting’ website using Microsoft Power Platform. 

Collas says that parents can now access Power BI reports hosted in a SharePoint site to review each piece of work submitted by students, see the grades awarded and read teachers’ comments about possible improvements. 

This means that, rather than waiting until the end of term to hear about a problem, parents and students can tackle issues as they arise and act on teacher feedback. 

“If you have to wait until you’ve got your report at the end of term or the end of the year, it can be too late to do anything about it,” he says. 

“We wanted parents to be looking at this with their children, sparking conversations,” says MacDonald. 

MLC, an independent Prep to Year 12 day and boarding school, transitioned to the cloud-powered Microsoft 365 productivity platform (including Power BI) in 2018. 

Using Power Automate and Dataflow tools, MLC can bring data from multiple sources into the “Dataverse” to create a comprehensive view of their student information. 

The enhanced access to information results in more productive discussions at parent-teacher interviews. 

Parents are prompted to review their children’s progress before meeting with teachers, creating a higher level of shared understanding. 

“We know from research that effective feedback is one of the most significant drivers of student learning. A continuous reporting system allows teachers to provide feedback to students and parents about the student’s progress as it happens,” explains Macdonald. 

“Teacher feedback has been positive – especially since it removes the need to write end-of-semester reports. Our teachers have gained a lot of time back, which allows them to focus on student needs, rather than the paperwork,” says Collas.  

“We have also been able to combine student test results from the classroom with the ability data we collect to create a more rounded view of student performance and to identify whether a particular student is underperforming relative to their ability.” 

Students have full access to the Power BI reports, and Collas says he is seeing senior-year students frequently check their results. 

“We can see from our usage stats that students are very engaged with the console and getting a lot from it.” 

Collas, an IT developer, observes that using the Power Platform in this context has made it possible to “provide a high-tech, high-quality outcome in a school environment”. 

“We want to give people the opportunity to engage the way they’d like, but it’s not forced. It’s just there if they want to take advantage.” 

With Microsoft 365, MLC is accelerating learning, by tracking student progress with real-time insights that inform instruction. Learn more about how educators and education leaders are leveraging insights from Microsoft 365.