Designing and Evaluating Data Dashboards for Educators

Abstract

Data-driven decision making is an important area of education. One topic related to this area is understanding the kinds of tools, such as data dashboards, educators need in order to manage the day-to-day tasks of working with student data. This article presents the design and evaluation of a collection of data dashboards built specifically for a school district. The paper describes five principles used to guide the initial design of the dashboards, along with several of design trade-offs faced by the design team. In turn, a formative evaluation was conducted with stakeholders (n = 43). The evaluation assessed the dashboards’ usability, perceived usefulness, and potential to improve teaching. The implications of this work are discussed in reference to designers, educators, and researchers interested in empowering educators with data.