From Data to Actionable Knowledge: A Collaborative Effort with Educators

Teachers, school administrators, and researchers at Xerox have started a collaborative effort to leverage educational data from schools to target the individual needs of students in the classroom. In this paper, we report on our observations of using a data driven methodology to individualize education. First, we discuss the common types of data that schools now collect and the different types of actionable knowledge that could be valuable to students, teachers, principals, district, state and national administrators. We also discuss ways that data mining and analysis can 1) provide guidance for each individual student, 2) suggest temporary clustering of students for targeted instruction, and 3) combine data from multiple tests with demographic and other factors to separate the effects of curriculum and teaching changes from uncontrollable factors that affect student learning. We welcome academic collaborators, who can work with us to find solutions to challenges in mining of educational data.