Communicating NSSE Results with Data Visualization
With 47 NSSE items, communication of results to a university-wide audience during an agenda-filled meeting can be a challenge. Chaminade University of Honolulu integrated the use of colors to communicate NSSE results in lieu of text, tables, or multiple charts and to visibly highlight trends and display differences (e.g., effect sizes). For the purposes of illustration, real data from the fictional NSSEville University are used in displays in place of Chaminade results.
The Chaminade faculty core competency assessment committee was interested in reviewing trends within the NSSE Engagement Indicators as part of their assessment cycle. With simple spreadsheet conditional formatting they displayed multiple years of all 47 Engagement Indicators as a single color index or, a single “heat map”. The colors purple, green, and yellow were used because they stand-out, however, any color scheme works. For trend analysis they used only two colors: green for where the university is above a comparison group; and yellow for where the trend is below the comparison group. By restricting to just the two distinctive colors, a single image makes it possible for viewers to rapidly answer the question: “From year to year, where is the university consistently higher and consistently lower than the comparison groups?” (See Figure 3 for a sample color index using NSSEville data).
For comparison of differences, they used heat maps—matrix representations of data that display individual values and the magnitude of differences in values in colors. Purple denoted largest favorable differences, with smaller differences fading into green, then yellow, to show the largest unfavorable difference. The range of colors enables all viewers to quickly identify where the university has strengths (brightest purple) or weaknesses (brightest yellow) with respect to the NSSE Engagement Indicator items. (See Figure 4 for a sample heat map representing NSSEville data.)
This color display and communication method has been used at Chaminade University of Honolulu to facilitate campuswide discussion and rapid interpretation of the vast amount of information contained in the NSSE reports.
