Edulytic Solutions: The Shift in Data and Technology

Welcome back, and thanks for checking in. I’m currently writing a short series that highlights key themes from my November 18 webinar, where I introduced Edulytic Solutions, LLC. Edulytic Solutions is a system my company has developed to help PA programs cope with the growing demands of data. While I’ll be talking more about Edulytic Solutions as the series continues, one of the most critical pieces of this conversation is the problem it was designed to address. Data itself is not the villain here. The real challenge is the amount of time data now consumes.

Last week, we talked about why so many PA programs feel overwhelmed by data and how dramatically expectations have changed over the past decade. This week, I want to focus on a key shift underlying that experience: assessment in PA education is no longer episodic. It’s continuous, and multi-layered.

Assessment Is Ongoing, Not Occasional

Assessment now unfolds continuously. Data are generated daily across courses, clinical experiences, evaluations, remediation efforts, and outcomes tracking. Expectations have shifted from periodic snapshots to longitudinal understanding, requiring programs to recognize patterns as they emerge rather than after the fact.

The language of Standard C1.01 clearly reflects this reality. It emphasizes ongoing self-assessment and requires the timely collection, translation, and review of data so it can be evaluated by the right people at the right time. The critical analysis expected under this standard is longitudinal, and programs that are stretched for time or resources may find themselves falling behind. Importantly, C1.01 anticipates data compiled across multiple years; having only a single year of assessment is sufficient only for truly new programs.

Beyond collection and review, programs must also meet, discuss, and document their self-assessment processes. They must be able to explain how decisions were made, how areas for improvement were identified, and how conclusions and action plans are supported by analysis. In effect, programs are now expected not only to analyze their data, but to analyze their analysis, a higher level of awareness that requires time, structure, and sustained capacity.

Recognizing the Problem Before the Tools Existed

My awareness of this shift in data analysis developed gradually through years of working alongside PA programs as they navigated accreditation, assessment, and continuous improvement. Throughout my career in PA education, I was always drawn to assessment. It’s an area I genuinely enjoyed and spent a great deal of time pursuing.

When I launched my consulting firm in 2020, providing data support to our clients was a natural extension of our purpose. As we worked more closely with PA programs, however, one thing became increasingly clear: the core challenge was capacity. Programs were being asked to process more information, more frequently, and in more interconnected ways than ever before.

By 2021, I began imagining what a business focused on educational data analytics might look like. I considered a system that could automate data translation, including parametric and descriptive analyses. At the time, though, the technology needed to do this work at the scale and sophistication required simply wasn’t available.

In the interim, Massey Associates Consulting helped PA programs meet these evolving expectations through our human expertise. That work includes an excellent team of consultants guiding assessment processes, interpreting complex datasets, supporting accreditation preparation, and assisting programs in telling a coherent story about what their data mean. That work remains essential.

At the same time, it became increasingly clear that even the most experienced human analysis has limits. As data volume and velocity continue to grow, relying exclusively on manual processes places an unsustainable burden on faculty and staff. This realization doesn’t diminish the value of human judgment. Instead, it clarifies where that judgment needs better support.

The ARC-PA Sixth Edition Standards reflect this broader reality. They emphasize:

• ongoing review rather than episodic reporting

• evidence of trends over time

• clearer connections between data, decisions, and action

• and increasing attention to workload and sustainability.

These expectations reflect what is now possible and necessary in a data-rich educational environment. They also carry an important implication: if expectations have evolved alongside technology, solutions must evolve as well.

In late 2024, we launched an international development effort to build a comprehensive platform to meet this need. Over more than a year of work, a multidisciplinary team, including AI specialists, statisticians, software developers, platform engineers, and project managers, collaborated to create tools specifically designed to accelerate the translation and interpretation of educational data.

Edulytic Solutions represents an effort to support human expertise by dramatically accelerating data processing, pattern recognition, and insight generation — so educators can focus their time and judgment where it matters most.

In next week’s post…

We’ll turn to a topic that often prompts both curiosity and caution: analytics and artificial intelligence. We’ll explore how modern analytic tools can support human judgment and help PA programs keep pace with continuous assessment without adding unsustainable workload.