University Strategy Performance Dashboard Development Assessment

Assessment Brief

Background

In 2025, Edge Hill University appointed Professor Michael Young as Vice-Chancellor. His first priority is to develop and deliver a new University Strategy that establishes a clear vision and measurable progress towards institutional excellence.

Following extensive stakeholder consultation, the strategy is structured around six strategic pillars.

You have been commissioned as an external business analytics consultant to design, develop, and demonstrate a strategic performance dashboard that can monitor and communicate progress toward these strategic ambitions.

To support this task, you are provided with fictitious data (2023:2025) from the University of Gotham City, representing data analogous to Edge Hill University’s own performance data. You will use this dataset to build and pilot your dashboard.

Your dashboard must visualise key performance indicators (KPIs) related to five of the six pillars (Pillars 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6) at programme, department, and strategic levels.

The Six Strategic Pillars

The University’s 2031 Strategy defines ambitions for students, staff, communities, and stakeholders through six pillars:

1. Your Education, Your Way: Flexible, inclusive teaching and curriculum, personalised student experience, and belonging.
2. Professional Futures: Employability, work-integrated learning, employer engagement, and alumni support.
3. Ideas into Action : Research culture, innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and business partnerships.
4. Strong Communities: Collaboration with public services, local and international partners, and community transformation.
5. Powering Our Future : Enhancing digital services, operational effectiveness, and staff development. (Not included in this assessment.)
6. Sustainable Growth: Financial stability, enrolment growth, income diversification, and UN Sustainable Development Goal alignment.

Your Task

You are required to present your work through two deliverables:

Excel Interactive Dashboard 

Develop a dynamic and interactive Excel dashboard that:

• Displays KPIs related to five pillars (1, 2, 3, 4, and 6).
• Allows exploration of performance by programme, department, and strategic level.
• Enables users to filter and compare data by year (2023–2025) and other relevant categories.
• Presents clear, well-formatted charts, tables, and indicators using appropriate Excel tools (e.g. PivotTables, slicers, conditional formatting, charts, dynamic ranges).
• Supports data-driven decision-making by visualising trends, outliers, and relationships.

Consultancy Report

Produce a professional consultancy report to accompany your dashboard, suitable for a senior university leadership audience.
Your report should:

• Explain your analytical approach and the reasoning behind your KPI selection.
• Describe how data was cleaned, transformed, and structured within Excel to support analysis.
• Discuss your dashboard design choices, including interactivity, layout, and data visualisation principles.
• Present key findings and insights, highlighting patterns, trends, and performance issues.

Offer evidence-based recommendations for how the University could improve performance against its strategic pillars.

Areas of Analytical Focus

Your analysis and discussion should address the following areas:

• Performance Variation: How do different programmes and departments perform across the five strategic pillars?
• Temporal Change: What patterns of change are visible between 2023 and 2025?
• Outcome Drivers: Which metrics have the greatest influence on student outcomes (e.g., NSS results)?

Emergent Insights: What unexpected or significant findings arise from your analysis?

Brief Summary of the Assessment Requirements

The assessment requires students to act as business analytics consultants commissioned to design, develop, and present a strategic performance dashboard for Edge Hill University’s new 2031 Strategy. Using a fictitious dataset (2023–2025) from the University of Gotham City, students must build and pilot an Excel‐based dashboard that monitors performance across key strategic pillars.

Core Requirements

1. Excel Interactive Dashboard

   • Visualise KPIs linked to five strategic pillars:
     Pillar 1: Your Education, Your Way
     Pillar 2: Professional Futures
     Pillar 3: Ideas into Action
     Pillar 4: Strong Communities
     Pillar 6: Sustainable Growth

   • Display performance at programme, department, and strategic levels.
   • Allow filtering by year (2023–2025) and other categories.
   • Use Excel tools such as PivotTables, slicers, charts, conditional formatting, and dynamic ranges.
   • Present trends, variations, and insights supporting data-driven decisions.

2. Consultancy Report

   • Describe the analytical approach, KPI rationale, and data preparation steps.
   • Explain cleaning, transformation, and structuring of data.
   • Justify dashboard design and interactivity choices.
   • Summarise key findings and performance insights.
   • Provide recommendations for improving performance across the pillars.
   • Address core analytical areas:
     Performance Variation, Temporal Trends, Outcome Drivers, and Emergent Insights.

How the Academic Mentor Guided the Student Through the Assessment (Step-by-Step Approach)

The Academic Mentor provided a structured, supportive, and sequential process to help the student understand expectations and complete both deliverables with clarity and professionalism.

Step 1: Understanding the Strategic Context and Pillars

The mentor began by explaining the purpose behind the 2031 Strategy, the six pillars, and why only five are assessed.
They helped the student interpret:

• Institutional priorities
• How KPIs relate to strategic ambitions
• What university leaders expect from performance dashboards

This ensured the student understood the strategic purpose before building any visuals.

Step 2: Reviewing the Dataset and Identifying KPIs

The mentor walked the student through the raw dataset (2023–2025) and guided them to:

• Identify relevant metrics for each pillar
• Map KPIs to programmes, departments, and strategic levels
• Establish which indicators drive outcomes such as NSS results

This step ensured analytical alignment with the assessment brief.

Step 3: Data Cleaning and Structuring in Excel

Under mentor guidance, the student:

• Removed errors, duplicates, and formatting issues
• Standardised category names for consistency
• Converted data into structured tables
• Created Pivot-ready datasets for filters and slicers

The mentor highlighted the importance of clean data as the foundation of accurate dashboards.

Step 4: Developing the Interactive Dashboard

The mentor broke the dashboard-building process into manageable tasks:

1. Creating PivotTables for each pillar
2. Designing slicers to filter by year, programme, and department
3. Building KPI visuals such as line charts, bar charts, and gauges
4. Applying conditional formatting to highlight performance levels
5. Designing a clear, intuitive layout
6. Testing interactivity to ensure seamless user experience

The student learned how to merge visual clarity with functional interactivity.

Step 5: Analysing Performance Patterns

With the visuals completed, the mentor guided the student to interpret the data:

• Which programmes show strong or weak performance?
• What changes occurred from 2023–2025?
• Which KPIs drive student outcomes most?
• What surprising insights emerged?

These findings later shaped the consultancy report.

Step 6: Writing the Consultancy Report

The mentor explained the professional tone required for senior leadership and guided the student through each section:

• Introduction: Purpose, context, and structure of the report.
• Analytical Approach: Why certain KPIs and methods were chosen.
• Data Preparation: Cleaning, structuring, and Excel processes used.
• Dashboard Design: Visualisation principles, layout, interactivity, colour choices.
• Findings: Trends, variations, drivers, and emergent insights.
• Recommendations: Evidence-based suggestions for improving pillar performance.
• Conclusion: Summary of insights and the value of the dashboard.

The mentor emphasised coherence, clarity and professional presentation.

Step 7: Reviewing and Final Refinements

The mentor helped the student:

• Ensure dashboard interactivity worked correctly
• Cross-check KPI accuracy
• Polish the report’s formatting and APA citation style
• Validate that all assessment requirements were met

This step finalised the submission.

Final Outcome and Learning Objectives Achieved

Outcome Achieved

The student successfully:

• Produced a fully interactive Excel dashboard aligned with university's strategic pillars.
• Delivered a professional consultancy report demonstrating clear analytical reasoning.
• Generated meaningful insights and actionable recommendations for leadership.

Learning Objectives Covered

• Application of business analytics to strategic university performance.
• Creation of interactive dashboards for decision-making.
• Ability to perform data cleaning, transformation, and structuring.
• Skill in designing readable, insightful visualisations.
• Interpretation of trends, variations, and outcome drivers.
• Professional communication through a well-structured consultancy report.
• Linking analytics to strategic objectives and organisational performance.

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