Turning Years of Course Feedback into Strategic Visibility at KAUST with Explorance Blue

About King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is a leading research institution located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Established in 2009, KAUST is dedicated to advancing science and technology through interdisciplinary research, education, and innovation. Fostering a collaborative environment that encourages groundbreaking discoveries and solutions to global challenges with state-of-the-art facilities and a commitment to sustainability, KAUST is shaping the future of science and engineering.

The Challenge: A Fragmented Evaluation Process

For many years, course evaluation reports were customized for senior faculty members without broader sharing. This meant that Program Chairs were unable to access reports for subject groups or specific courses, resulting in implications for identifying trends and areas of improvement.

Additionally, Deans and Associate Deans had restricted access to top-level data, confined to the end of the academic year, leading to a reliance on manual comparisons and bespoke statistical analysis. This fragmented evaluation process furthered inefficiencies and inconsistencies in teaching effectiveness and quality assurance.

The Solution: Transparency, Data Accessibility, and Trend Analysis in Course Evaluations

In 2023, KAUST implemented the Explorance Blue Dashboard, providing an interactive and centralized place for Deans, Associate Deans, Program Chairs, and other administrators to easily access a single source of truth for evaluation data.

The platform provides analytics tools for deeper analysis, helping stakeholders identify data trends and areas for improvement to improve academic quality. With a commitment to academic excellence, this streamlined approach enables KAUST to have a consistent process to assess teaching effectiveness and program quality.

The Outcome: Implementing the Explorance Blue Dashboard

The Explorance Blue Dashboard leverages role-based access, ensuring Deans, Associate Deans, Program Chairs, and other relevant stakeholders are given the necessary data for decision-making. Using the dashboard, KAUST imported four years of historical evaluation data to assess course feedback and perform time trend analysis.

With the flexibility to adapt to KAUST’s structure and real-time reporting capabilities, the Explorance Blue Dashboard enabled administrators to monitor feedback and promptly address issues, supporting continuous improvement in teaching and learning.

Implementing the Explorance Blue Dashboard addressed our need to improve data accessibility and transparency by providing a centralized platform for sharing evaluation reports with relevant stakeholders beyond individual Faculty members. This increased transparency, fostered collaboration, accountability, and informed decision-making across departments and programs.

— Dr. Glenn Hardaker Director of Teaching and Learning, Office of the Provost, KAUST