Temple University’s Fox School of Business has developed a revolutionary personal- and professional-development platform for assessing student performance using Microsoft Power BI, a suite of analytics tools used to analyze data and share insights.
Developed and launched by the Fox School in 2014 to demonstrate value and return on investment to students, Fox’s RoadMap™ incorporates feedback from faculty, industry executives, and peer- and self-assessments to visualize student progress and development across a number of competencies. This feedback is provided to students in a comprehensive dashboard that compares individual improvement to baseline information, identifies gaps and areas needing further development, and establishes a program or university as the catalyst for change. With the use of Power BI, the platform allows students and faculty to visually explore data through a broad range of interactive visualizations and access data anywhere, anytime.
“The benefits of RoadMap™ are innumerable,” said Christine Kiely, RoadMap’s co-creator, and Associate Vice Dean of MBA, MS, and International Programs for Temple’s Fox School of Business. “RoadMap™ is unique in terms of academic progress reporting because it takes into account the reinforcement of concepts throughout the curriculum and measures the reoccurrence of a competency as it is expressed in subsequent coursework..
“No single grade for a single course can capture this kind of development.”
More importantly, RoadMap™ allows students to self-reflect on their newly acquired skills and competencies and develop strategies to overcome insufficiencies.
Online, on-demand, and in real time, the newest version of RoadMap™ launched in August 2016, with production support of Teksouth Corporation. RoadMap™ is fully integrated with Blackboard, and is a repeatable solution that allows universities using Blackboard to adopt RoadMap quickly and easily. According to Kiely and fellow RoadMap™ co-creator Cliff Tironi, the Manager of Performance Analytics for the Fox School of Business’ MBA and MS Programs, RoadMap™ will soon integrate with Moodle and Canvas.
“RoadMap™ demonstrates the level of innovation taking place at Temple University,” said Dr. M. Moshe Porat, Dean of the Fox School of Business. “RoadMap™ allows students to self-reflect on their newly acquired skills and develop strategies to overcome insufficiencies. It’s an essential tool for students within our MBA programs, which continue to rise in prestige within national and international rankings.”
Flinders University, located in Australia, will begin using RoadMap™ as part of its three-year partnership with the Fox School of Business, which began in Fall 2016.
FOR REPORTERS: On Wednesday, Oct. 26, Tironi and Kiely will lead a presentation on RoadMap™ at EDUCAUSE, the nation’s largest higher-education conference.