How to Use Excel Spreadsheet to Track Students Progress

Tracking students’ progress in schools is critical, especially to educators and policymakers.

Educators want to know whether teaching strategies and other interventions are working. On the other hand, policymakers are more concerned about the quality of the human capital released in the job market.

Tracking student growth lets you know when to adjust the teaching strategy for maximum impact. For example, when your students are performing well, you can move forward to keep the student engaged.

Keeping track of performance data allows you to respond quickly and optimize teaching strategies.

To track student progress closely, you need a tool that’s easy to use, especially in displaying key insights.

Most teachers and other professionals in the education sector use Excel spreadsheet to track students’ progress. And this is logical because Excel has proven its reliability over the years. Besides, it’s one of the data visualization tools you’ll find on every personal computer.

However, the tool produces pretty basic charts. And this means you have to spend more time editing.

You have an option of installing an add-in into your Excel to access ready-to-use and visually appealing charts for tracking students’ progress in academics.

In this blog, you’ll learn the following:

• Why is Tracking Progress Important in Education Sector?
• How to Use Charts to Track Students’ Progress?
• How to Track Students Progress in Excel?

How to Use Excel Spreadsheet to Track Student Progress in Academics? Other than normal charts which you usually use in routine there are certain special charts which can help you to present the data in a more meaningful way. For example the below chart is also drawn in Excel by using an add-in. This helps you to create a dashboard which can show you different subjects comparison in a single go.

Visualization Source: ChartExpo

There is another novel way of showing student results of different subjects by using double bar chart.

Visualization Source: ChartExpo

What if you have to show results of boys and girls and also want to see the trend then below chart is a good option to be used to track student progress in Excel. But this is only possible with the external add-in.

Visualization Source: ChartExpo

Why is Tracking Progress Important in Education Sector?

In today’s education climate, school success is defined as ensuring achievement for every student.

To reach this goal, educators need tools to identify students at risk academically and adjust instructional strategies to meet their needs better.

Tracking progress helps teachers use students’ performance data to optimize their teaching and continually make more informed instructional decisions.

To implement student progress monitoring, teachers determine current performance levels based on skills learned during the school year. They can use this data to track achievement goals and rate of progress.

Most educators use Excel spreadsheet to track students’ progress. In the coming sections, you’ll learn the shortcoming of Excel in monitoring performance.

How to Use Charts to Track Students’ Progress?

Monitoring students’ progress is vital for ensuring academic success.

As teachers move through the year, they need to keep tabs on each student and carefully evaluate their growth or decline in academic performance. Charts and graphs are highly recommended in place Excel spreadsheet to track students’ progress.

And this is because you can easily display insights of key data points in an easy-to-follow manner. For instance, teachers can easily point out an uptrend or downtrend in class and individual-level performance using graphs, such as a Line Chart.

Charts, such as Pareto Chart, can help educators identify the 20% of students driving the 80% of the overall academic performance.

How to Track Students Progress in Excel?

A Stacked Bar Chart is one of the tested and proven visualization designs you can use to track students’ progress. And this is because the chart is amazingly easy to read and interpret. Besides, the chart is best-suited in displaying totals across categories.

Teachers can leverage this chart to display the performance of students across different subjects, such as math, language, history, etc.

In other words, a Stacked Bar Chart is the go-to visualization design if your goal is to display part-to-whole relationships (how an individual student compares to the rest of the class).

Excel comes up with basic charts. And this means you’ve got to plot the graph from scratch using other tools.

You have an option of installing a particular add-in called ChartExpo to access ready-to-use different charts to track students’ performance.

To install ChartExpo into your Excel, follow the simple instructions below.

• Click this link to install ChartExpo into your Excel.
• Open the worksheet and click the Insert button to access the My Apps option.
• Click the My Apps button and click the See All button to view ChartExpo, among other add-ins.

• Select ChartExpo add-in and click the Insert button.

• The add-in will be added to the Excel application. It may ask you to log in if you aren’t already.

• List of charts will appear once add-in is successfully loaded.

• You can find “Stacked Bar Chart” in the list.
• Once your chart pops up, hover your mouse over and click it.

How to track students’ progress in Excel does not have to be a stressful affair. Use ChartExpo for change.

In the coming section, we’ll use the Stacked Bar Chart in ChartExpo to visualize sample data. Remember to access hidden insights, you’ve got to avoid the Excel spreadsheet to track students’ progress.

Example:

In this example, we’ll use a Stacked Bar Graph to display insights into the data below.

Student	Term	Math	Science	History	Computer
Alex	First Term	80	50	85	80
Alex	Mid Term	75	70	65	90
Alex	Final Term	65	66	72	77
David	First Term	90	88	50	65
David	Mid Term	55	77	65	90
David	Final Term	70	97	70	55
James	First Term	88	67	80	62
James	Mid Term	92	91	90	70
James	Final Term	100	75	50	85

• Select the sheet holding your data and click the Create Chart from Sheet Data button, as shown below.

• Check out the final chart below.

Insights

• David was the best student in math in the first term.
• James was the best student in science during mid-term.
• Alex outperformed the rest in history during the final term.

FAQs:

Why should you track students’ progress?

In today’s education climate, school success is defined as ensuring achievement for every student. To reach this goal, educators need tools to personalize their instructional strategies.

Tracking progress helps teachers use student performance data to optimize their teaching and continually make more informed instructional decisions.

What’s the best tool to use to track students’ progress?

Freemium data visualization tools, such as Excel, lack ready-made and visually appealing advance visualizations.

You can transform your Excel into a visualization juggernaut by downloading and installing third-party add-ons, such as ChartExpo. ChartExpo is loaded with ready-to-use Stacked Bar Charts, plus 50 more ready-made and visually stunning graphs.

Wrap up

As we said, tracking students’ progress in schools is critical, especially to educators and policymakers.

It can help educators know whether teaching strategies and other interventions are working. Besides, it lets you know how and when to adjust information as you teach for maximum impact.

Keeping track of performance data allows you to respond quickly and optimize teaching strategies.

To track student progress closely, you need a tool that’s easy to use, especially in displaying key insights. Besides, you’ve got to avoid Excel spreadsheets to track students’ progress.

We understand Excel has proven its reliability over the years. Besides, it’s one of the data visualization tools you’ll find on every personal computer.

How to track students’ progress in Excel should never be a complex or overwhelming task.

We recommend you install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, into your Excel to access ready-made and visually appealing Stacked Bar Charts.

ChartExpo is an Excel-based add-in that’s loaded with an insightful and easy to interpret Stacked Bar Chart, plus over 50 more advanced visualization designs. You actually don’t need programming or coding skills to visualize your data using the add-in in your Excel.

To access easy-to-interpret, ready-made, and visually appealing Stacked Bar Charts to track students’ progress effectively.