Data visualization that is effective should deliver actionable insights.

Higher education officials collect a tremendous amount of data, from admission to student involvement. This information is delivered in a variety of formats to diverse partners at various levels of the organization. While the original data may sound right to the IT sector, not everybody is a data science expert. Knowing how to capture and assemble a big amount of data is one issue; understanding how to present and analyze that data is quite another.

What else can educators do to make data useful and discuss the report with others? Building better dashboards are one key.

Dashboards Open the Door to Analytics

Dashboards serve as entry points into analytics. Dashboards present, evaluate, and contrast past data with budgets, predictions, and targets in a single glance. They provide top-level information to decision-makers on a certain subject, such as school registration statistics.

Dashboards display basic data and instrumentation to consumers. The reader can access more detailed reports and adjust the dashboard’s presentation style (for example, revisualizing dashboard content as a bar chart instead of a graph).

Widgets on a dashboard allow users to dig deeper into mini reports and see data in various ways. Dashboard widgets can also display snapshots of and connect to standard or customized reports.

Dashboards are used by educators for strategic planning, performance analysis, and judgment. A basic bar or pie chart can convey a story with accompanying widgets that link to more specific information that can help the main storyline. Educators have a tool that can swiftly teach investors and others about any given problem, the tactics they prescribe to solve it, and how they will go about it by visualizing the success of university courses, the status of enrollment, or the impact of changing demographics.

Dashboards operate best when instructors and IT collaborate. Here are six best practices for dashboards.

Always use reliable and dependable data.

Analytics works best when it collects data from a range of sources. Some of these resources are intrinsic to a university or its system, but others, such as demographic information, may come from third-party sources.

You are familiar with your data. You most likely have adequate governance and security procedures in place to assure its accuracy. When using third-party data, however, security and control requirements must also be harmonized. Do your 3rd providers adhere to the same criteria as you? Is the information up to date? Can you trust the data?

You must trust the data if you are going to run an analysis and use that for dashboard presentations and decision-making.

Data should be organized for the problems at hand

Data from colleges and universities are typically organized around four important concepts: achievement, demographics, programs, and perception/survey data. Instructors want to see if their kids are succeeding, what demographics they come from, which initiatives and classes are the most successful, and what parents, instructors, and students think. As a result, the data banks that dashboards rely on should be able to solve queries and concerns in these 4 groups at a minimum.

Emphasize collaboration while creating dashboards.

IT knows dashboard technology, but it is unfamiliar with the difficulties that educators encounter regularly. These difficulties must be addressed by dashboards. Instructors and IT should actively collaborate from the moment a dashboard is designed until it is put into production. If educators and IT do not collaborate, they risk creating dashboards that are no longer what educators desire.

Raise the Relevant Question When operating a Dashboard

While employing a dashboard, it is critical to ask queries that will yield actionable data. If pupils appear to be falling out of classes, the first question to ask is what the disparities have been for the last five years. This may prove the issue, but it does not provide answers.

The next step could be to determine which classes have significant dropout rates. There may also be questions about student demographics, who is instructing courses, and how long it has been since courses have been altered.

The result should be a list of actionable explanations for high dropout rates.

Tell a Story Using Data

Dashboards should depict the problem at hand. The bottom line for increased dropout rates may be that particular courses are out of date and should be changed or canceled. Alternatively, student comprehension and preparation may have diminished, and students are failing more intellectually rigorous courses.

Whatever the main plot is, a well-designed panel with buttons that can obtain data on each narrative aspect aids in orchestrating the story of a challenge and what would fix it. Storytelling is aided further by the use of appropriate visual elements (graphs, pie charts, etc.) that visually explain the topic to viewers.

Adjust Dashboard Visualizations for Different Audiences

You may be asked to present material to several groups of stakeholders with diverse information requirements. If you are, it is critical to tailor the visual element of dashboard demonstrations to the demands of various audiences.

For example, if you’re addressing increasing dropout percentages with governors or staff, a pie chart illustrating which fields of study have the greatest dropout rates can be instructive.

If you’re meeting with local authorities to discuss future labor needs and want to address dropout rates, a heat mapping that shows where students are dropping courses may be useful.

Dashboards are among the most effective tools available to educators for investigating challenges, uncovering insights, and communicating what they discover to others.

These solutions perform nicely when IT and instructors work together to provide best-of-breed displays and statistics.