Data base development for school-related research

During 2008, the Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE) began a research project that started with 19 teachers and more than 200 students who were educated, interviewed, and assessed for STEM learning. This longitudinal study grew fast, gathering numerous pieces of data from 168 teachers and more than 3,000 students during the five-year treatment. This information growth led to a need for data management improvement. However, there are few database structures available for gathering school-related research. This paper presents lessons learned during the process of database construction and improvement for supporting project data consolidation. The process of construction and development included structural changes to provide an organization commensurate with schools´ clusters, domains, and strata, all of which occur organically in the school setting. The database construction also included program development for uploading and cleaning large amounts of information; application analysis for defining an appropriate tool; and improvements for user information visualization. The analysis of lessons learned includes a discussion of major changes within the database and benefits of creating program codes within this tool. The discussion ends addressing the implications of having a structured and automatized yet flexible database tool designed for school settings.