Dublin City University - From Insight to Impact: Enhancing Student Progression through Data Analytics

The 'Academic Success' dashboards, developed using Power BI, provide a data-driven framework for monitoring student progression and retention across Dublin City University (DCU). Initiated and continuously refined over several years by the Quality and Institutional Insights Office (QIO), the project has been guided by strategic input from senior university leadership, particularly DCU’s Education Committee.

The dashboards currently span three core areas: exam results analysis, student progression trends, and CAO entry requirements linked to first-year outcomes. Designed for ease of use, they support decision-making by Programme Chairs, Heads of School, and senior university leaders.

By consolidating complex datasets from the Student Record System into an intuitive interface, the dashboards enable granular filtering by faculty, school, programme, study mode, demographic profile, and entry route. This empowers users to identify potential issues and areas for further exploration, such as pass rates, cohort-based performance, external benchmarking of final grades by ISCED code, and correlations between Leaving Certificate results and university performance.

Looking ahead, the recent rollout of DCU’s new Student Information System is expected to further enhance the dashboards’ functionality, enabling deeper insights and more responsive academic interventions.