Enhancing Student Insights for MFL Mentoring using Interactive PowerBI

“Butterfly Data have been a pleasure to work with, offering exceptional service and outcomes which will have immediate positive impact on project delivery and project users. The added value offered through this project will resonate for many years and will help inform our understanding of learner attitudes towards International Languages at a critical moment - diolch yn fawr/merci beaucoup/grazie mille!!”

Lucy Jenkins, Product Owner, The MFL Mentoring Project

Challenge

The MFL Mentoring Project, funded by the Welsh Government and based at Cardiff University, aimed to enhance the learning experience of 12–14-year-olds studying International Languages (IL) in secondary schools across Wales. The project collected extensive data through annual learner surveys to gauge students' experiences and attitudes towards language learning.

However, the process of analysing and reporting on this large volume of data was time-consuming and lacked automation, leading to inefficiencies and delayed insights. The project team sought a more streamlined and automated approach to analyse and report on the data, enabling them to identify key trends and insights more effectively.

Solution

Butterfly Data collaborated with the MFL Mentoring Project to develop interactive Power BI dashboards that aligned with the project's branding. These dashboards provided the project team with user-friendly visualisations and comprehensive data analysis, facilitating the review of data insights over time.

Two automated dashboards were created:

1. Overview dashboard: This dashboard encompassed data from four academic years, including 36,483 learner survey responses across 155 secondary schools in Wales from 22 local authorities. It provided an in-depth analysis of the overall data, enabling the project team to identify trends and patterns across the entire dataset.
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2. Presentation dashboard: This dashboard produced individual school-specific reports, automating the generation of 45-slide presentations for each of the 155 schools for each year of data. It mirrored the MFL Mentoring Project's previous presentation format, ensuring consistency and ease of use.

To ensure ongoing usability, Butterfly Data provided a user and maintenance guide, along with recorded walkthroughs, to support the project team in using and maintaining the dashboards effectively.

Impact

The implementation of the automated Power BI dashboards resulted in significant time savings for the MFL Mentoring Project team. The automation of reporting processes saved an estimated six weeks of effort per year, allowing the team to focus more on analysis and programme development.

The dashboards also facilitated the identification of important new trends and insights, enhancing the project's ability to inform and improve the learning experience of students studying International Languages in Wales.
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