SD3: Higley School District
Predicting school enrollment is crucial when planning for a school year, yet most school administrators do not have easy access to accurate predictive models. In order to provide school districts with the best models, the ASU Cloud Innovation Center (ASU CIC) and Higley School District have partnered to support Arizona educators.
Problem
Arizona educators need support, especially when it comes to planning future semesters. It can be difficult and costly to know how many students they will need to serve and a wrong prediction can have big impacts. Overestimating the number of students will lead to a waste of precious and scarce resources, while underestimating will result in a lack of resources to serve their students. School administrators need predictions that can be dynamic, as their circumstances can change rapidly. According to local school administrators, simply getting static predictions can cost as much as $20,000, an amount that can be a significant burden for the school districts and does not have the flexibility to accommodate changing circumstances.
Approach
The ASU CIC and Higley School District have come together to solve this challenge. The ASU CIC is working to create a prototype of a tool to predict future enrollment and integrate real time data, such as attendance data that can paint a picture of what the school enrollment currently looks like. The solution, known as SD3, will be a cloud-based software. SD3 will use a wide pool of data from various sources and provide analytics with an easy to use dashboard. The goal is to have a solution that is easy to use and highly accurate so that school administrators have the ability to predict future enrollment and serve their students as best as possible.
Supporting Artifacts
The Amazon Working Backwards process produces three artifacts - a Press Release, a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and a Visual depiction of the user experience.You can find the Enrollment artifacts here:
Next Steps
The ASU CIC developed a prototype and it is available on GitHub at this link.
About the ASU CIC
The ASU Smart Cities Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is supported by AWS on ASU’s Innovation campus - SkySong. The mission of the CIC is to drive Innovation Challenges that materially benefit the greater Phoenix metro area and beyond. The CIC will do this by solving pressing community and regional challenges, using shareable and repeatable technology solutions from ideation through prototype, as a service for the greater human good.
The CIC also provides real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector.
The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, water conservation, vandalism, pedestrian safety, digital service delivery and many others. The CIC leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.
For more information on the ASU CIC, to read about projects or to submit a challenge, please visit https://smartchallenges.asu.edu.