The Problem
Every year in Australia, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 partake in NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) in order to determine whether they are meeting important education outcomes. In 2023, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) implemented changes to how they report and measure NAPLAN results. This was done to meet an initiative of the 2019 National School Reform Agreement.
As a result, exposé was engaged to help our education provider customer accommodate these changes. Our customer was able to identify that these changes would have massive impacts on the way they ingest, the structure of the storage, and their reporting of NAPLAN data.
The Solution
To accommodate the changes, a close collaboration was established with the product owner to gain a comprehensive understanding of what the changes to NAPLAN meant and how it would affect their reporting solution. It was identified during this process that the new structure to NAPLAN would affect the client’s ingestion of the data, structure of the data layer and their reporting solution.
Subsequently, further collaboration with the product owner was undertaken to devise designs and document the necessary modifications within the reporting layer. This aimed to present both the new and historical data in a meaningful manner to users, effectively highlighting the differences in structure between previous years and the present.
In all, the solution provided could be broken into four components: creating representative development data, adjusting the data ingestion process, the data layer structure, and the reporting layer. To create the representative development data, exposé collaborated with the testing authorities to understand the new schema requirements. Once created, it was propagated into the data layer via the ingestion regime. Finally, the Power BI model was redesigned so that both existing visuals could be accommodated, and new pages and visuals can be supported.
Business Benefit
Due to our approach, the customer did not experience any prolonged downtime or interruption in data access and reporting and a seamless transition to the new ACARA changes.
Moreover, exposé fully managed the collaboration of, and coordination with third parties, as well as the technical changes, thereby alleviating the pressure on the customer and ensuring a seamless transition and compatibility between the old and the new.
This alignment also ensured minimal change control was needed due to existing familiarity on the part of consumers with regards to data and reports, yet with new ACARA changes accommodated.
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