iClassPro Blog

Analytics Hold the Power to Boost Students’ Growth

May 31, 2018

Vikas Arun isn't a typical Math-Science kid. He loves data science, mathematical modeling, operations research, and tap dance - because he has a knack for seeing patterns everywhere. He performed for Michelle Obama in 2011 - when she was the First Lady, and in 2016, he interned with Microsoft to work on a data analytics project that could predict Olympics winners.

Analytics can do that for your kids too. Whether you are dealing with a traditional academic class or dance & gymnastics students, you can always use data analysis techniques to find the strengths and weaknesses of a student, see the success patterns, and find ways to help them progress on the path to success.

Source: Wikipedia

Here are some of the top ways in which institutions, parents, and students can employ analytics to map out an individual’s success path:

Define the Key Metrics to Measure Student’s Success

When a dance or gymnastics institution applies analytics to track its students' performance, it may have several targets in mind. Besides improving their techniques, it might want to study factors that affect the retention of its students and their progression towards perfection in their routines. For the purpose, it will have to define the key metrics by which they can judge the growth of their students.

For example, in Aerobic Gymnastics, you may want to know:

  • Artistic Score of the student (which judges the music and choreography of a routine),
  • Difficulty Score which studies the difficulty level of the moves (and other things like the fluidity of the movement), and
  • Execution Score (where scores are deducted for any falls, execution faults, or other mistakes).

The system is not much different from the way students are judged in a traditional classroom for English, where the teachers assess students using metrics like how well they followed the essay writing structure, how many grammatical and spelling mistakes their writing assignments have, and how interesting is their writing piece. Professional essay writing experts who help students with their homework use such metrics to predict the grades that students might get in a particular piece of work they have done.

Dance institutions may also use the metrics to identify the areas where their students are the strongest and areas in which they need to work harder to achieve the level of success they are aiming for.

Identify the Factors that Predict Success

Data analysis of students’ performance over a period can help a cheerleading or dancing institution to identify malleable behaviors that predict success. They can then devise strategies and find ways to nudge students to adopt them.

For example, in a swimming class, attendance matters a lot. Over a short period, variables are easier to control, but when you consider a student's presence over a period of more - and see that he or she is in the pool on time every day, you know you have a winner in the making.

Source: Pexels

There are always injuries, illnesses, and personal setbacks to deal with. Successful swimmers know how to get over these uncomfortable moments and work harder to achieve their targets once again.

Often we see that students who are the first to enter a class and last to leave it are the ones most interested in that particular activity. A student who shows an active interest in improving himself or herself will surely do better than others in the long run.

Provide Relevant Training Material to Students

Analytics help you draw relationships between the behaviors, training timings, training routines, the name of the coaches or instructors, and several other individual points of the most successful students in a class. You may set up individual leaderboards for each student to which they can log in and match their performance with the best dancers or gymnasts or swimmers in the past (at their school, in their country, and worldwide) – and see how they are progressing in different areas.

It can be a powerful tool for the students and encourage the students to try and find more about how to improve in a particular area in which they need support. Using the adaptive learning platforms, the institutions can then provide the relevant training content to them.

Seek Students’ Feedback & Suggestions

Automated data analysis techniques make it easier to conduct student surveys and read through the students’ and parents’ feedback forms to offer more meaningful and relevant training to them. You can increase the number of achievers or winners in your class by starting an email campaign to reach out to students who repeat the same mistake again and again or ask the instructors to pay particular attention to them – focusing at the specific points where they falter most.

You might also want to share your findings with other reputed institutions in your field of expertise and work collaboratively to produce the best dancers, swimmers, gymnasts, or cheerleaders of the time.