March 2024
Introducing Red InnCol
Over the past four months, the Good Data Institute (GDI) partnered with Red InnCol, a forward-thinking non-profit dedicated to reimagining public education in Colombia. Through the development of advanced, easily accessible tools, Red InnCol has been at the forefront of enabling Colombian students to prepare for crucial academic milestones, such as their final year school exams.
Red InnCol’s mission is to democratise education across Colombia, striving to achieve quality education for everyone. They achieve this through offering a suite of online learning resources that not only help students ace their exams but also equip them with in-demand skills in software development, data science, digital marketing, and much more. Red InnCol supports public education with its three key online learning tools including:
Apprendo Robotics: Robotics and computational thinking in public schools.
Apprender Paga: Digital Education tools for public schools.
Red Saber: Free preparation material for the Saber 11 test.
This initiative has achieved remarkable success since its inception in 2021, with 45k students registered and over 260,000 practice tests taken.
Partnering with GDI
Red InnCol approached GDI with a challenge, having accumulated a massive database from their platform activities, amassing over 5 million rows of data, but lacked the resources to analyse it effectively. The goal was to gain a deeper understanding of their users' engagement and performance, to better inform their marketing strategies, funding applications, and product development.
GDI, with its network of data science and analytics professionals were thrilled to assist. Working with Juan Sebastian Ossa Moreno (Co-Founder and Director, Red InnCol), the GDI team comprised of Sam Caldwell as Project Lead, and volunteers Samuel Lee, Greg Marshall, and Wesley Harfield.
The Problem
The project unfolded over three main phases - Data preparation, Dashboard and Insights - that are described in the following section.
1) Data Integration and Preparation
The initial challenge was familiarising ourselves with Red InnCol's AWS environment, ensuring a secure and reliable flow of data. Red InnCol's data was housed in an AWS RDS database and the volunteers simply built SQL queries to derive meaningful insights. It was also important to ensure the dashboard architecture didn't impact the performance of their production database. This was crucial for maintaining the integrity and availability of Red InnCol's educational platform.
2) Analysis and Dashboard Creation
Using Looker Studio, the GDI team developed a comprehensive dashboard that allows Red InnCol to monitor trends, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. It was designed to be intuitive for non-technical stakeholders, ensuring that insights are accessible to everyone involved in the project. It visualises key metrics around user engagement and demographics, test performance by area, college and subject, as well as resource utilisation.
Registered User Demographics Page
The first page of the dashboard allows Red InnCol to understand various characteristics of their registered userbase including their demographic details (number of tests taken, city of their college and school), and population statistics.
Score Breakdown Page
The Score Breakdown page presents Red InnCol with the ability to get insight from the tests being taken. The top table presents the test participation as well as the performance, based on the percentage of questions students had gotten correct, by school type (public vs private). Meanwhile, the lower half of the dashboard presents insights into the percentage of correct questions, by subject, based upon School Type, Year, and Gender.
Example Insights:
Lectura Critica (Critical Reading) is a subject that is the strongest amongst students at both Public (45.31% correct) and Private (46.5% correct) schools.
Students in private schools perform slightly better in Mathematics and Critical Reading than those in public schools.
The percentage of questions correct has increased across the board for all subjects since 2021, except for Mathematics.
Community Reach Page
Finally, the Community Reach page allows Red InnCol to understand test participation rates by region and see any trends over time.
Example Insights:
A total of 119,388 tests have been taken by 44,312 users. These users are distributed across 5,830 schools in 910 cities.
The highest number of tests taken (as indicated by the largest circle) seems to be in the region around Bogotá, Colombia.
There are noticeable peaks and troughs in test-taking across the years, indicating seasonal trends in testing due to periods of school exams and breaks.
3) Strategic Insights and Recommendations
Beyond the dashboard, the GDI team provided Red InnCol with strategic insights into their user base. This included identifying patterns in test performance across different regions, understanding user engagement with various learning resources, and highlighting opportunities to enhance the platform's reach and effectiveness.
Impact and Future Direction
This partnership has empowered Red InnCol to streamline their operations, focus their efforts on high-impact areas, and better serve the educational needs of Colombian students. The insights derived from the data analysis have already informed several strategic initiatives, including targeted marketing campaigns, resource allocation, and the development of new learning modules.
As Red InnCol continues to expand its offerings and impact, the foundation laid by this project with GDI ensures that data-driven decision-making will remain at the core of their strategy. The team at Red InnCol are now better equipped to track their progress, celebrate their successes, and navigate the challenges ahead.
Looking Forward
The success of this project underscores the power of collaboration between non-profits and data professionals in driving social impact. As Red InnCol looks to the future, they are excited about the possibilities that this enhanced data capability brings - not just for their organisation but for the broader landscape of public education in Colombia.
A heartfelt thank you to the dedicated team at GDI, and to all the supporters of Red InnCol, for making this project a reality. Together, we are making strides towards a world where every student in Colombia has the tools and opportunities to realise their full potential.
Author:
Samuel Lee (GDI Volunteer)
About GDI:
The Good Data Institute (established 2019) is a registered not-for-profit organisation (ABN: 6664087941) that aims to give not-for-profits access to data analytics (D&A) support & tools. Our mission is to be the bridge between the not-for-profit world and the world of data analytics practitioners wishing to do social good. Using D&A, we identify, share, and help implement the most effective means for growing NFP people, organisations, and their impact.
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