OPeDi: A Shiny Application to Monitoring Students’ Career

Abstract This paper provides a detailed overview of the OPeDi app, an interactive web application developed in the Shiny framework, to support the monitoring and analysis of the students’ careers within a university department. The tool provides an integrated environment for interactive data exploration and reporting through a dynamic and user-friendly interface. Methodologically, this approach enhances the transparency and replicability of institutional data analysis while substantially reducing the temporal lag associated with traditional static analyses that characterizes the evaluation of the Italian university system. By enabling real-time monitoring, it lowers both the technical and temporal barriers to evidence-based decision-making, thereby supporting more agile and informed institutional responses. The paper discusses the application’s design principles, implementation strategy, information content, and potential role as a decision-support and quality-assurance tool in higher education institutions.