The outcome figures below were the targets the program was designed and approved against, rather than post-implementation measurements.
The situation
The institution had pioneered remote learning since 2010 and served more than 125,000 students through live classes, interactive sessions, and collaborative projects. That activity produced substantial and genuinely valuable data across three system families: student information systems holding enrollment, grades and records; learning management systems carrying engagement and submission behavior; and curriculum design systems supporting faculty content development.
The systems worked. What did not exist was any connection between them, which meant nobody could answer questions that spanned more than one, and the questions that mattered most about student success all spanned several.
The approach
A governed foundation on Google Cloud. Cloud Storage as the initial repository for raw and processed data, BigQuery as the analytical engine, Cloud Dataflow handling both real-time and batch processing, and Cloud Composer orchestrating the workflows and maintaining data quality on schedule.
Integration across the three system families. Secure connectors captured enrollment, grades, demographics, and progression from student information systems; participation, submission patterns, forum engagement, and resource access from learning management; and content performance and pathway effectiveness from curriculum systems.
Dashboards designed by role rather than by data source. Four tiers, each built around the decisions that role actually makes:
- Executive leadership: enrollment trends, retention, financial performance
- Academic operations: course performance, curriculum effectiveness, resource use
- Faculty: engagement insight and assignment performance for their own students
- Student success: early warning indicators and intervention triggers for advisors
The outcome
The platform reached full production twenty weeks from initiation, following a pilot with a limited user group and a phased departmental rollout. The program was designed and approved against targets of 35% improvement in retention through early intervention, 50% faster time to actionable reporting, and 25% improvement in resource allocation efficiency.
What made it work
Six weeks of discovery before any construction began. Stakeholder workshops with faculty, administrators, and IT established what each group actually needed to decide, which prevented the common failure of building dashboards that reflect the shape of the source systems rather than the shape of the decisions.