Data Dashboards and Designing Lessons

My main role as Employability Practitioner is to teach employability education within the curriculum, but this is just one facet of my role. I am also actively looking to ensure inclusivity and diversity is addressed at all areas of my teaching. In order for me to do this, I engage with multiple teams and departments across the university such as Creative Shift, Disability Services, Counselling and Chaplaincy, and I am also a member of the CCW Anti-Racist Action Group.

Siobhan and Jheni’s talk about the Data Dashboards and Epistemic Donuts was extremely valuable to further support the idea that we are able to construct the curriculum and teaching around the existing data that we have available to us – combatting areas such as attainment and retention. It is vital that ethical issues should be addressed and should be a core consideration to our activities as teachers – as well as for assessment purposes. I was really struck by the quote “The sector seems to use metrics much as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.” (Bamber, 2020) and this is something I think is fuelled by fear. If the sector continues to use data for performative purposes, rather than to make change, then we continue to operate in an echo chamber where we regurgitate the same types of students, graduates and teachers operating at the same level.

I admit, I was aware of the data dashboards and their capabilities, but never engaged directly with them to create lessons for the cohorts I work with. After engaging in the session with the AEM team, and doing reading in my own time, I understand that this is doing a disservice to the students I interact with, and to myself. I deserve, at the very least, to understand the data and what it means for myself, for it to then feed into my work as a practitioner. The dashboards are extremely effective in highlighting, under ‘Surveys’, graduate destinations – something that relates directly to my teaching of careers and employability. I now often refer to this information for each lesson I am delivering to each course, to understand better where their graduates end up. I also check to see what the graduates have commented about their time studying on the course – are there any points that I am able to combat during my lessons, to ensure this doesn’t happen again?

Student satisfaction is extremely important to me, as I had a horrible time at university when I was studying. This is what has encouraged me to engage with the information available on the data dashboard, because I want to affect change within the sector. This is not from a place of wanting to be a “saviour”, but it is from a place of understanding that representation, wellbeing, outcomes, sustainability, and employability are vital to the success of the student body.