Evaluating Usage of an Analytics Tool to Support Continuous Curriculum Improvement

Abstract

Curriculum analytics (CA) consists of using analytical tools to collect and analyse educational data, such as program structure and course grading, to improve curriculum development and program quality. This paper presents an instrumental case study to illustrate the usage of a CA tool to help teach-ing staff collect evidence of competency attainment in an engineering school in Latin America. The CA tool was implemented during a 3-year continuous improvement process, in the context of an international accreditation. We collected and analysed data before and after tool implementation to evaluate its use by 124 teaching staff from 96 course sections. Data collection techniques included: analysis of documentary evidence collected for the continuous improvement process and teaching staff questionnaires. Findings show that the tool supported staff tasks related to the assessment of competency attainment at a program level. However, usability and func-tionality issues would have to be addressed to also support course rede-sign, providing actionable information about students’ performance at an individual level. Lessons learned imply that institutions could adapt and adopt existing CA tools to support curriculum analysis by not only in tool development, but also in capacity building for its use for continuous improvement processes.