OPeDi: A Shiny Application to Monitoring Students’ Career

This paper provides a detailed overview of the OPeDi app, an interactive web applica-tion developed in the Shiny framework, to support the monitoring and analysis of thestudents’ careers within a university department. The tool provides an integrated environ-ment for interactive data exploration and reporting through a dynamic and user-friendlyinterface. Methodologically, this approach enhances the transparency and replicability ofinstitutional data analysis while substantially reducing the temporal lag associated withtraditional static analyses that characterizes the evaluation of the Italian university system.By enabling real-time monitoring, it lowers both the technical and temporal barriers toevidence-based decision-making, thereby supporting more agile and informed institutionalresponses. The paper discusses the application’s design principles, implementation strat-egy, information content, and potential role as a decision-support and quality-assurancetool in higher education institutions.