Analyzing Student Data

Spreadsheets have been used in business for centuries. Beginning with early ledgers, hand written and calculated documents, to today's high tech spreadsheet programs, such as Excel or Google Sheets. Spreadsheets can be extremely effective in a classroom. First, spreadsheets provide an "at a glance" method of determining which students have missing assignments. Additionally, spreadsheets can be used to make calculations of grades quickly. In this assignment, the spreadsheet provided the averages of individual student scores, as well as the class average in seconds. This saves a great deal of time when one is preparing report cards.

However, more importantly, teachers can quickly sort data and identify which students are falling below the class average.

Additionally, spreadsheets simplify the graphing of individual student progress. This reduces the chances of a teacher overlooking the fact that a specific student is falling further behind his/her peers in a certain area of study.

Using spreadsheets and charts not only make it easy for a teacher to identify students that are missing assignments, it also makes it easy to see how students are progressing. A quick look at the chart above indicates that students test scores are improving, and a what rate they are improving. A teacher can know if his/her teaching methods are reaching individual students. By tracking what methods are used to teach each unit, teachers can identify learning styles of individual students and provide individualized instruction within that learning style.

Another benefit of spreadsheet charting is the choice of graph types, or changing them. I prefer a bar chart as above, but what if my building administrator prefers to view data in a line chart? Working in a spreadsheet, this is an easy conversion. Therefore in moments, I have a chart in the format my boss prefers.