During his time as a high school teacher in Connecticut, Julian Miller realized a simple Excel spreadsheet could solve a lot of his problems.
By inputting data such as behavioral incidents, grades, extracurricular activities, attendance, and credits towards graduation. "You started to see trends, patterns, outliers across all those data points," he said. For example, if a student's grades trended down during basketball season, Miller could recommend whether it was worth it to stick with the sport or focus on studies. Soon, the excel spreadsheet spread to students using it to track their progress toward a college goal, while teachers and admin started to adopt the tool. Soon he was asked to scale it up district-wide.
Now over a decade later, Miller has taken his passion for the intersection of data and education, and launched a startup that is helping districts, schools, teachers, students, and even other edtech companies parse through and actually act on the vast amounts of data they have on hand.
His product is called Learnmetrics. It's a data analytics platform and interactive dashboard that can be used by teachers, schools, districts, and edtech vendors to see how students and classes are performing in real time. It's a malleable platform, Miller said, dependent on the "questions" a user wants to ask of it. An educator inputs any information that they have, either from other technology, edtech, or outside sources they have, and then Learnmetrics automatically pulls from those sources to continue to update metrics. This can track data as broad as course completions across departments, and as specific as the trend in students on task in homeroom. "We are one of the first products that lets schools define what is important to them," he said.
In essence, it can be a data translator. "The school doesn't have to be a data scientist, the [edtech] product doesn't have to learn to be a good teacher," he said.
Miller's hope is that his tool can help education see data differently. "In education, we measure outcomes after the fact, which takes a historical view rather than an operational view," he said. By giving quick feedback, Learnmetrics can help educators tweak as they go, rather than scramble for a solution when it is too late.
It's something Miller has been striving for since he left the classroom. After working as a high school teacher and administrator, Miller transitioned to education and corporate consulting where he gained a better sense of how data was used outside a school. One of those roles brought him to Chicago, where he settled down as a developer for the Sun Times and Accretive Health. But in the back of his mind, he thought about his students and the teachers that had helped him get to where he was (he learned to code in a class in high school).
So in 2012, decided to build Learnmetrics. The company went through the Brandery in Cincinnati, which he said they really honed in on the product, and Impact Engine, where they got the tools to create a business. Since graduating Impact Engine in January 2014, the now 1871-based company has amassed over 100 customers and not a single one has left since adopting the product, he said. There are also more on the way, including potentially his former high school in Connecticut he said.
Part of that is they've got data in their DNA--they use internal analytics to track customer use and progress to best understand how to develop and tweak their product. In addition, their pricing is on a sliding scale so educators can test it out on a small scale against other products, and decide if they want to scale its use.
Though Learnmetrics has found initial success, he has been purposefully quiet about their progress. "We want to be quiet, listen, learn observe," he said. Not anymore.
"We've learned enough to be engaged in a meaningful way," said Miller.
