Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

So, Google Sheets. A lot like Excel and pretty cool to use. Our task here was to take a bunch of raw test score data, find out the total class average for tests 6-10, take out all of the student data that was above that average and then create a graph that shows these students information. The first step I took was to get rid of the information that I didn't need, the information from tests 1-5, and compute averages for each individuals test scores and a class average. That information can be viewed in Sheet 1. Next, I highlighted all of the names and data and used the Data tab to sort the information by the average test score so I could easily identify the individual averages that were above the class average. This can be seen on Sheet 2. Finally, on Sheet 3 I created a chart that shows the students change in the format of a line graph. What this graph shows us in a visual representation is that, most of the students test scores steadily inclined the more tests they took. There a few exceptions where students scores improved and declined seemingly at random. This could be explained by a multitude of things such as a students increased interest in a particular topic resulting in a higher score on the test or the student has personal things going on that affect their ability to focus on a test and their scores drop lower than normal. Yet, despite these exceptions, by Test 10 each of the students individual scores were higher than they were at Test 6. Also, by Test 10 the majority of the students scores were above the original class average of 192.

 I can see this being a useful tool to use when Student Teaching to chart student progress and to use for our Teacher Research project to analyze and visually represent student change. Its also fun to make the data and graphs pretty colors!! :)

Here is the link to my Google Data Sheet in case you want to take a peek at that too.