Dashboards can be a powerful way to present data-based intelligence using visualization techniques that display relevant, actionable data. They can track stats and key performance indicators (KPIs) and present them in a quick, easy-to-scan format, with the most relevant information understandable at a glance.
3 Elements of a Good Dashboard
Element 1: Know Your Audience
When determining audience and their needs, specific questions can be asked to really get to know exactly who your audience is to customize reports for each one. This follows Bloom’s Raxonomy methodology and applying high-level thinking skills.
Who is your dashboard audience?
Project managers, C-suite, strategy planners, administrators, trainers, learners.
What do they need?
Detail, trends, data from external sources.
What are they trying to do?
- Know: How many users in the site?
- Analyze: These users do this, or that course is popular.
- Evaluate: Can you prove these courses led to better grades? Was your new content more effective? What data leads to this conclusion?
Element 2: Tell a Story
When you want to tell a story with dashboards or data, the findings should be presented in intuitive ways so that the viewer gets a complete understanding of what they are seeing. Additionally, you should be able to connect other reports or data in the dashboard using a common theme, such as color or chart type.
Including instructions on how to use it, or what the data might mean, is a good way to support the audience who needs to use the information to make meaningful decisions. Here are a few dashboard examples for the following audiences:
Project Managers
Project managers typically want to evaluate trends and charts that compare completions or enrollments over time or relationships between time spent and grades. They’re not usually too curious about the specifics of individual users, but rather may want to see the details for courses with the highest grade average or with the most completions.
Administrators
Administrators want to analyze which courses have the most enrollments and who was enrolled in them. For example, how much time did it take for a user to log in after signing up for a course, or to finish their course?
End Users
End users can include both instructors and learners. They want to know who is in the course, who has completed a certain activity, what is outstanding, and the grades, time spent, or number of logins to the course. Details are important to this group; an image is useful if it shows the relationship between completion and in progress.
Custom Dashboard in Zoola Analytics
Identifying students at risk of going off-track is key to being able to ask questions as to why the learner is struggling. This information can be used to further investigate what is happening and whether it is with the learner, or if the course needs to be adjusted to improve program effectiveness. There are a number of factors determining at-risk learners, and a key component of this is engagement.
Element 3: Leads to Action
Letting the data do the talking is part of good storytelling, and the viewer should also be able to connect the various components of the dashboard together to show the different parts of the whole. This is where the analytics comes in, and enables you to illustrate several reports that can be tied together. The end result of a good dashboard is action taken and improvements made.
