Notes from November Viz and Tell on Visualization for Assessment
24 Nov 2020Our November Viz and Tell had 170 registrants and 110 live participants, covering a range of topics related to data visualization and assessment in libraries.
Our live notes document has been updated with resources and some of the discussion that happened. The recording is also available.
To organize the discussion based on the group’s interested, we distributed a pre-event survey and determined that the most popular topics were:
- Training and inspiration for visualization design
- Choosing and using visualization tools
- Visualizing survey data
- Sharing library visualizations and dashboards publicly
Based on some write-in responses, we expanded “Visualizing survey data” to include qualitative and text data.
The discussion focused a lot on tool and resource recommendations, all of which are captured in our live notes documents. Concerns that seem to draw a lot of attention included: selecting colors (especially when constrained by brand guidelines), creating accessible visualizations, selecting and learning BI tools for dashboards, getting access to the right kind of data for an assessment need, and automating data processing steps to reduce repetitive manual work.
After the event, we sent around a post-event survey to ask for suggestions for improvement. We received only a few responses, which often suggests that participants don’t have specific feedback they would like to provide. The comments we got suggest that participants would enjoy seeing more examples of library visualization work, and that the combination of real-time video/audio, chat, and live note-taking may be a bit overwhelming. (For a few examples of library dashboards that were shared, see the library-specific examples section in our live notes.)
We’ll continue to refine the format for these events! Thanks so much for your participation, and be on the lookout for some exciting new topics for Spring 2021!