Insight. Applied.
NoDropouts.org just reported on Greater Southern Tier Board of Cooperative Education Services’ roll-out of CohortTracker™.
In their article, they note that:
Of course, once schools leaders have a better idea of who is most at risk, there is simply no substitute for good, old-fashioned compassion—and good, old-fashioned elbow grease.
Indeed. Technology is only ever part of the solution.
The Greater Southern Tier Board of Cooperative Education Services (GST BOCES) has released CohortTracker™ to fourteen school districts within its region. CohortTracker™, developed by Decision Mechanics and Prism Decision Systems, is an early warning system for identifying students who may be in danger of failing to graduate.
Students’ progress is assessed using an algorithm that takes into account:
These metrics are transformed into a visual “traffic light” risk indicator, allow guidence councillors and teachers to identify the need for interventions.
According to Steve Manning, Manager of Computer Services for GST BOCES,
We are very pleased to have gone live with CohortTracker™. The app is simple, user friendly and extremely effective. School principals and guidance counselors will find this early warning system to be a valuable new tool for tracking and managing their students to successful, on-time graduation.
GST BOCES will now turn its attention toward statewide rollout. "We hope to have the app available to all New York State BOCES Regional Information Centers before the end of this school year.", Manning said.
CohortTracker™ can now be licensed to other US states (and other countries) through Prism Decision Systems, LLC.
The application was developed in ASP.NET MVC 3, using a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data repository. Student data can be imported from other SQL Server databases or via CohortML XML documents.
For more information, see:
Decision Mechanics have been working with Prism Decision Systems, LLC to design an early warning system for identifying high-school students who are at risk of dropping out.
The project was undertaken to demonstrate how an agile development approach could—in a matter of weeks, not years—deliver focused, actionable, real-time information to educational decision-makers at all levels. Drop-out prevention is only one of a number of problems that could be tackled using the same approach.
Successful application of agile practices within school systems lies, in part, on the availability of high quality data. As part of the development process, the team designed CohortML. CohortML provides a formal, general description of school cohorts, allowing numerous systems to be built on top of a single, well-defined data set and the potential for sharing applications across districts/states.
The early warning web application was developing using ASP.NET MVC 3 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
Prism Decision Systems’ article contains more information.
Leadership development consultancy Sunray7 recently retained Decision Mechanics to develop a web application based on their well-regarded “Resilient Leader” assessment and development approach.
Sunray7 have helped a range of leading multinational companies develop their future leaders. Their clients include:
Decision Mechanics helped the team at Sunray7 transform their manual process into a web applicaton—allowing their leadership development clients to take a self-administered assessment and obtain a personalized profile and development plan. This involved working with senior Sunray7 managers to redesign a sophisticated face-to-face process for on-line presentation.
Rachel McGill, Sunray7’s Managing Director, said:
When we started out we thought we knew what we wanted—we were wrong. The process of application development that we went through with Decision Mechanics challenged our assumptions and limiting beliefs and clarified our understanding of our business and what we had the potential to achieve. So, yes we now have an innovative and shiny new product that really helps our clients, but more importantly we have a whole new direction to consider taking our business in. The potential business, confidence and renewed energy that this brings represent a substantial return on our investment.
The Resilient Leadership application was developed using ASP.NET MVC 3 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Resilient Leader web application, and how it could help your organization develop its leadership potential, please contact Sunray7’s Rachel McGill on +44 (0)1432 357969.
Decision Mechanics have been working with Banxia Software to develop Frontier Analyst PowerTrain.
Frontier Analyst PowerTrain is a data envelopment analysis solution engine that can be deployed as a web service. It is designed for those who wish to utilize efficiency analysis capabilities as part of a larger web/intranet/mobile application.
The engine is designed to be deployed on application providers’ own systems, so there is no dependency on third-party hosting. Its powerful analytical capabilities are made available via a standard SOAP web service—using the open DEAML data envelopment analysis model specification to facilitate communication with the client web application.
Frontier Analyst PowerTrain builds on the pedigree of the well-regarded Frontier Analyst desktop application, which has, to date, been sold to organizations in around 70 countries.
If you wish to purchase Frontier Analyst PowerTrain, or have further questions, please contact Banxia Software.