Visualizing U.S. Education Data

(Data Visualization at University of Washington)
Team Members: Meredith Anderson, Jenn Chan, Sophie Kahan, Vera Ranguelova

insert_chart INITIAL INVESTIGATION

BACKGROUND

At the beginning of the project, we thought about our own difficulties in choosing a college. We had to consider available financing, institutional reputation, distance to home, extracurriculars, choice of programs and majors, etc. We wondered whether data, rather than just our parents and guidance counselors, could have made this process easier.

INITIAL DESIGN QUESTION

How might we help high school and undergraduate college students make decisions for their post-secondary education?

TARGET USERS

High school seniors in the U.S. education system

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

  • The College Board
  • Chegg
  • Khan Academy
  • University websites (e.g. admissions.rpi.edu)
These organizations offer students various resources for researching potential schools. While the College Board and Khan Academy offer students advice on how to succeed, they do so with articles rather than interactive tools or visualizations. The first iteration of our project aimed to fill this gap by providing students with an interactive visualization of the data they need to make informed decisions.

DATA SET

We found data sets from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is a federally funded organization that collects and analyzes data related to education in the United States. We initially decided to use the NCES Study of 1988, a longitudinal study of about 17,000 eighth grade students over the course of more than a decade.

INTERVIEWS & PERSONAS

We interviewed 7 students and developed 2 personas based on these individuals.
  • Dustin - Has difficulty choosing between a major he's interested in, such as journalism, or a major with good job security, such as engineering.
  • Rebecca - Wants to find an academic path that would best meet her interest in genetics, philanthropy, and making a positive impact on humanity.

SKETCHES & USER FEEDBACK

Sketch Sketch
Feedback on the sketches revealed that students' main concern was whether or not they would get a job. There was also a lack of interest in data visualizations. Therefore, we pivoted our design question and target users.

insert_chart REDEFINING THE PROBLEM

DESIGN QUESTION

How can data help college admissions counselors more effectively recruit and counsel prospective students?

TARGET USERS

College admissions officers recruiting domestically in the United States

INTERVIEWS & PERSONAS

We interviewed 4 students and developed 3 personas based on these individuals.
  • Jackie - Wants to recruit more low income and first generation students.
  • Cameron - Wants to recruit out of state students.
  • Kendra - Wants to recruit international students.
Due to the limitation of our data set, we can only focus on users like Jackie.

UPDATING THE DATA SET

We updated our data set to the more recent one, which contains 23,000 ninth graders from 944 schools starting from 2009. We extracted 30 variables from the study for our graphs.
Sketch Sketch

USABILITY TEST

We mocked up our sketches in Tableau, and conducted usability tests with college admissions counselors to identify areas for improvement. We prepared a script, list of tasks, and a brief survey for participants to complete after the test.

As a result from the test, we made improvements on confusing graph axes, titles, and labels. The color scheme also confused users in several graphs, so this was also updated to avoid misrepresenting different data as being alike.

Unfortunately, the biggest piece of feedback was something we were unable to fix, due to resources and time constraint. The content of the data presented was too general for our users. They have other paid tools and resources that would allow them to look up detailed information about students (e.g., standardized test scores, email addresses, etc.). The publicly available NCES data set does not provide personally identifiable data, and we do not have the resources to compete with these other tools.

insert_chart FINAL DESIGN

DELIVERABLES

  1. Interim project update presentation
  2. Interactive data visualization tool
  3. Final project presentation
  4. Formal paper detailing design process and results

DATA VISUALIZATION TOOL

Final Data Visualization Tool
The final visualization consists of five interactive dashboards designed in Tableau.
Data Overview Dashboard
This "Data Overview" dashboard offers an overview of student demographics in the data set. The user can zoom and filter students by ethnicity or GPA, highlight data by using the color legends, and clicking on the graphs. Hovering over the data points on the graphs delivers details-on-demand information about family income, percentage of students, and demographic attributes.
High School Counseling
The "High School Counseling" dashboard shows what college information and financial aid support the high school offers to students. The visualization can help college counselors allocate resources towards high schools. The user can zoom and filter students by GPA and family income, or highlight data by using the color legends or clicking on the graphs.
School Preferences
The "School Preferences" dashboard shows students’ college preferences in terms of distance, reputation, quality of social life, and cost of attendance. The visualization can help college counselors understand student expectations, and reach out to students who would fit well in the college's academic and social environment. Users can filter students by gender, ethnicity, GPA, and in-state/out-of-state school status. They can also hover for details-on-demand and highlight the data.
Programs and Majors
The "Programs and Majors" dashboard shows students' academic choices by program level and major preferences. The user can zoom and filter students by gender, ethnicity, GPA, in-state/out-of-state, and highlight data by program level and majors. By grouping majors in categories and subcategories, we offer the user the opportunity to see majors at different levels of aggregation.
Enrollment and Finances
The "Enrollment and Finances" dashboard evaluates how students' financial situations affect their choice for full-time or part-time class enrollment, plans for work study, and possibility of receiving financial aid. The user can zoom and filter students by gender, ethnicity, GPA, and in-state/out-of-state college status.