Jacksonville University creates a data-driven culture with Power BI

Enabling faster access to data and analytics on students and performance

Five years ago, data consumption at Jacksonville University (JU) looked very different than it does today. When leadership needed data, they would fill out a form and wait for the analytics department to provide a static pdf or spreadsheet. When current President Tim Cost joined the university in 2013, he brought with him 30 years of Fortune 500 experiences – including technology expectations. Today, the president can pull out his phone or iPad to access the JU app and see dynamic, relevant data at any time. 

In 2019, JU’s Institutional Research (IR) team partnered with Dr. Resche Hines and Dr. Angela Henderson from Trivium BI to begin using Power BI in its first steps towards democratizing data across campus in a constructive way. One of the team’s guiding principles was to become proactive in its approach to sharing data so that leaders, faculty and staff could make meaningful and important decisions based on the objectivity of data.  

The JU IR team and Trivium began by building numerous dashboards on a variety of data. The next step was moving those dashboards into a JU app. The two-person IR team and Trivium was able to do this in just days. 

“There was no recreating the wheel,” said Will Miller, Executive Director of Institutional Analytics, Effectiveness, and Strategic Planning at Jacksonville University. “We embedded the dashboards easily into the app and it breaks down dashboards so leadership can very quickly and easily access multiple pre-filtered data sets. Now, leaders across the school don’t have to keep track of individual Power BI links, and instead can access all the data directly from the device that is always in their hands. The app has completely streamlined and simplified data access for leadership.”

Democratizing data

Before 2019, a handful of departments owned the majority of university data, and their processes were completely siloed. At times, there would be meetings with deans from different colleges, each with their own data points pulled from those sources but with very different results. “From their perspectives, they were each correct,” said Miller. “Now, whatever comes out of the dashboard is official and for the first time in recent institutional history there is an authoritative data set.” The result is profound: more time for stronger discussions about student engagement and institution management, and time for focusing on initiatives that can have a more tangible student impact.

One of the first ways that JU began using Power BI is with the school’s census dashboard in the spring of 2020. Previously, the IR team would develop a spreadsheet with 50+ columns; a laborious process taking two weeks. Now, with the clean data coming in from the registrar office, they’re able to ship out the full census report within 45 minutes of setting it up. Faculty, staff and leadership have a simple dashboard with access to all the data, where they can dig down program by program, and college by college. 

“The intuitive nature of Power BI is by far one of the best benefits we see,” said Miller. “They intuitively know how to use the dashboards, it’s straightforward, shows them what they need to know and frees up our time to serve more of a data translator role.”

Improving retention and engagement

After shifting to a data-driven culture, the university learned some surprising results that changed how it approaches student engagement and support. In 2020, they started looking more closely at the academic ranking system based on criteria such as Grade Point Average (GPA) and quality of high schools, and applied a predictive retention model. Before using Power BI, many faculty members and the engagement task force had their own assumptions about which groups were excelling and where students needed assistance. After analyzing the data, contrary to popular perception, they realized that the students in the middle ranking were more at risk of not graduating. This led the university to reevaluate where they put energy and resources. 

Starting in the fall of 2021, the university is implementing a restructured advising approach for this middle group, with additional faculty devoted to advising them, providing more personalized engagement, more tailored course combinations, and exploring fellowship programs that previously were reserved for the higher-ranking students. “These program changes are all born out of mining this data, understanding what it means, and shifting perceptions,” said Rob Berwick, Assistant Vice President and Registrar for Jacksonville University. “Once faculty saw the data, it changed the conversation. Now they not only take on a new level of ownership, but it builds a trust factor that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Another aspect of the new data-centered approach is the ability to show students and parents predictive outcomes based on their specific course and course loads. For example, for certain undergraduate courses, the future graduation rate for students with a B is 70 percent; whereas it is 40 percent for those receiving a C grade. 

“All of a sudden their ears perk up when they’re able to visualize this,” explains Berwick. “Now we’re able to have conversations with both students and faculty to figure out the gaps, remediate the missing pieces, and this helps us create a better academic experience for students.” 

Driving transparency through scalability and data agility

During COVID-19 , JU began conducting regular student polling to gauge opinions on re-opening plans and remote learning. “We got an amazing 60 to 70 percent response rate each time,” said Miller. “Power BI gave us the ability to meaningfully share out the polling data without my team spending a lot of time and energy on it. The ability for students to see peer responses, and for everyone from the president to the custodial staff to see the same data, created meaningful buy-in across the institution.” 

For Trivium BI founder Dr. Resche Hines, helping schools like Jacksonville University provide this level of data accessibility at scale is both a professional and personal goal. “For me, the most transformative experience of my life was going to college. To be able to support institutions in building sustainable data cultures, to help them be self-sufficient and make more informed decisions that ultimately transform students’ lives – that is our goal.” He went on, “Power BI helps us empower those colleges to be self-sufficient, to understand their data, to make more informed decisions, and in turn to help change student lives.”