Seeing the Trees for the Forest: Building an Interactive LMS Dashboard for Customized Interventions

The University of Pennsylvania’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) is developing a dashboard that uses our LMS API to visualize and report data on how courses in the Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences (BAAS), a fully online, asynchronous undergraduate program, use our LMS and third-party tools. In this session, attendees will learn about the origins of this project, the questions LPS wants to answer through the dashboard, challenges faced and lessons learned, and tips for pursuing a similar endeavor at other institutions. Moreover, a comparison between our LMS vendor’s dashboard and the LPS homegrown dashboard will show how both complement each other and will make a case for creating an in-house reporting mechanism to capture data of interest to a school's circumstances and needs. By looking at tool usage, assessment, and at-risk student data, the session will reveal the value of a customized dashboard for schools seeking real-time, actionable reporting on instructional technology’s impact on many aspects of their operations, including instructional design, advising, and vendor relationships. The session will highlight Streamlit, an open-source Python library for building customizable web apps for learning analytics. Instructional designers, advisors, developers, and administrators will find this session especially relevant.