Software Application Usage in New Zealand's Education Sector: Analysing Seasonal Trends and Global Applicability

Mingwei Sun, Judy Li, Xinfeng Ye, Sathiamoorthy Manoharan

Abstract: The Ministry of Education is the New Zealand Government's lead advisor on the New Zealand education system and plays a significant role in shaping an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners. To this end, they provide a wide range of services, resources, guidance and advice to the education sector, families, and learners.In addition to these core functions, the Ministry also supports a number of software applications that are essential for school leaders and staff, education providers, and sector suppliers. The core functionality of these applications is to provide a secure communication platform for government education institutions and education providers to conduct daily operations, communicate with each other, manage, and deliver educational content. The main thrust of this paper is to analyse data pertaining to a selection of these applications. By understanding how these applications are used and by whom, the Ministry can optimise their performance and ensure they meet the needs of their users.There are two key research questions this paper aims to answer: (1) Are there any observable seasonal usage patterns? (2) Which key applications have the potential to find wider applicability outside of New Zealand? The seasonal usage patterns are useful for managing and adjusting server requirements, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively throughout the year.To address these questions, the paper analyses user access data to various applications to gain insights into usage trends and behaviours. The analysis shows that most applications have user usage patterns that are consistent with New Zealand's seasonal trends, particularly in line with the seasonal pattern of New Zealand's education operations. This finding highlights the predictable nature of application usage, which can be leveraged to improve service delivery and resource allocation.Additionally, our insights are useful to other countries and regions that aim to build similar applications to support their own education sectors. Other education systems could leverage the insights gained from our usage patterns and consider the applicability of our applications in their systems.