DESCRIPTION
As part of my graduate program at the University of Washington, I participated in a group project to assist the non-profit Alliance for Education (A4E) with data gathering in support of their mission.
…to ensure every child in Seattle Public Schools is prepared for success in college, career and life
We created 3 deliverables:
- Data Gathering Process Guide
- ERDC Roadmap
- the Consolidated Data spreadsheet
When we started this project, our goal was to design and develop an application that would automate the data gathering process that currently requires a significant investment in manpower by Alliance for Education. It quickly became clear, however, that the Washington State Education Research Data Center (ERDC) will provide access to more reliable and complete data for A4E when it comes online. Rather than designing a tool that would be abandoned when ERDC comes online, we have mapped out a process for A4E to follow in order to be positioned to take advantage of the ERDC data as soon as it is available.
In the meantime, however, A4E still needs data for the next year so we have collected data for the 2008-2009 to 2010-2011 cohorts and have developed instructions that will allow for A4E staff to efficiently collect data for the next cohort, 2011-2012, while ERDC is being developed. The Data Gathering Process Guide should provide anyone who is competent in the use of Microsoft Excel to update the Consolidated Data spreadsheet with the data that A4E uses to measure academic progress in the state.
We hope that these two documents will help A4E acquire the data that it needs to achieve its mission in the short term (with the Data Gathering Process Guide) and in the long term (with the ERDC Roadmap). We have provided both hard copies and digital copies so that you have the flexibility to distribute these documents to your staff and to update them as necessary to meet your business needs in the future.
ROLE
I served as a project manager and led the drafting and communication of the final deliverables.
TEAM
- Professor Kieth Nitta
- Mike Barta
- Dylan D’Entrmont
- Sam Putnam
- Timothy Ruppell
