Development and evaluation of a teacher dashboard to analyze diagnostic information in literacy teaching practice

According to the 2018 LEO study, 6.2 million German-speaking adults in Germany have significant problems with reading and writing. The 2023 PIAAC study also reveals deficits in everyday mathematical competences. Those affected can attend literacy and numeracy courses at adult education centers. But in 2021 there were only around 13,400 enrollments in such courses. Supporting people with low literacy skills is time-consuming and labor-intensive, as sklill gaps vary widely. Digital diagnostic and support tools can relieve teachers of some of the workload when providing individual support and potentially increase the number of people receiving support.

The dashboard is designed to help teachers evaluate complex diagnostic data sets in the areas of reading, writing and arithmetic and to identify the individual support needs of learners. In the context of literacy, there are particular challenges in designing teacher dashboards due to domain-specific conditions. The level of training of literacy teachers is often very heterogeneous, and insecure working conditions as freelance staff make the work even more difficult. At the same time, teachers must apply and interpret complex and time-consuming diagnostic procedures in order to identify individual support needs.

As part of iterative development and evaluation cycles, domain- and target group-specific requirements for the dashboard were identified and systematized. Based on general design recommendations for dashboards and data visualizations, specific design criteria for data visualizations in teacher dashboards were also developed. Building on this, an interactive prototype was created, which was tested with the target group using usability tests and then revised. The completed software was evaluated on the basis of usage data analysis and accompanying interviews in order to gain insights into usage patterns and barriers to use, as well as the didactic implications of the dashboard in real-world use.

The results of the different development and evaluation phases, as well as the real-use study, should help to make teacher dashboards more suitable for specific target group needs and structural parameters, so they can be used effectively and in a way that’s didactically useful.