Technology partnership with Reading University set to maximise academic performance

Data analytics software created by developer @Panintelligence is playing a central role in a major new initiative by @UniofReading aimed at empowering students and helping them to maximise their own academic performance.

The Panintelligence Pi dashboard, designed to enable users to visualise and make sense of data, has been selected by education technology business Tribal as the interface for its new student progress dashboard.

Via the dashboard, students can see at a glance their up-to-date progress, marks so far, and weighted value of each assessment via clear graphics, pie charts and bar charts. They can also set personal targets and share them with tutors who can help students meet their aims or adjust their expectations.

Launched in November 2019, the dashboard is being rolled out across the university and has had a positive response from students.

Reading University’s Professor Emma Mayhew said:

“We wanted to make assessment data easily accessible and timely for academic tutors and other student support staff to help enhance staff-student conversations, especially around progress and the student’s own performance goals.

“We have had tremendous student feedback on the dashboard, with students telling us they can now see which modules they are doing well in and which ones require more study and improvement, and that it is satisfying to know where they are excelling.”

Darren Lloyd, higher education sales manager at Tribal, said:

“This has been a unique project. Encouraging students to self-reflect on their progress over time, and providing detailed performance to tutors is increasingly important for retention and attainment and we hope to see many more institutions develop a student progress dashboard in the near future.”

Panintelligence CTO Ken Miller said:

“While the data analytics that the dashboard provides are complex, the visuals deliver a clear and straightforward insight into students’ own progress that can have highly positive results both for themselves and for universities.

“By being able to make sense of their own data students can now take ownership of their academic progress, which for many can be really transformational. Working with education specialists Tribal, we are seeing the power that data analytics can have to enhance the life chances of young people, and that is tremendously rewarding.”

CEO Zandra Moore and CTO Ken Miller founded Panintelligence in 2014. The firm announced expansion to the US in summer 2019 and secured Series A fundraising in November 2019. As the business scales rapidly, it has invested in key board appointments including ex-PayPal Europe and Barclaycard director Howard Bell as chair.

The Pi software currently has over 200,000 users worldwide across industry sectors ranging from education and retail to local government and healthcare.