Free COVID Dashboard Resources Offer Templates for College and County Data

sample COVID dashboard

Sample county-level COVID dashboard template

A project dedicated to sharing best practices in COVID-19 data visualization is offering free resources to help colleges and universities create their own dashboards for disseminating public health information to students, parents, faculty and staff. The initiative, dubbed We Rate Covid Dashboards, is a joint effort by Yale University faculty and public health experts across several higher education institutions.

We Rate Covid Dashboards does just that — grades the effectiveness of public-facing dashboards at United States colleges and universities based on a variety of criteria: readability, frequency that data is updated, types of data included and more. To date, 349 college dashboards have been rated; the majority have received grades in the B range, and a handful have received near-perfect scores. The ratings can be sorted by criteria or filtered by state, conference or other affiliations.

The We Rate Covid Dashboards team has put together two free Tableau-based templates for adding COVID data to a dashboard: one for college-level data, and one for county-level data. If institutions don't find the data for their specific school/county, they can submit their school name to be added to list within one business day. The resource page also includes a list of free data visualization software and accessibility resources with links to additional information.

"COVID dashboards are important: As we all know, there's a tremendous disease burden across our society at large, but also across college campuses. The COVID burden is substantial, it needs to be tracked, it needs to be transparently tracked and conveyed to the larger community," noted Cary Gross, professor of medicine and public health at the Yale School of Medicine and co-founder of We Rate Covid Dashboards, in a recent webcast about the project. "But COVID dashboards are also important for colleges because colleges exist to educate, to generate knowledge and share knowledge. So during this time of uncertainty and of a pandemic, the mission of a college overlaps with this mission of public health and safety. Transparency, I would argue, is a fundamental mission of colleges when it comes to their behavior during the pandemic."

For more information, visit the We Rate Covid Dashboards site.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • AI-inspired background pattern with geometric shapes and fine lines in muted blue and gray on a dark background

    IBM Releases Granite 3.0 Family of Advanced AI Models

    IBM has introduced its most advanced family of AI models to date, Granite 3.0, at its annual TechXchange event. The new models were developed to provide a combination of performance, flexibility, and autonomy that outperforms or matches similarly sized models from leading providers on a range of benchmarks.

  • An abstract depiction of a virtual reality science class featuring two silhouetted figures wearing VR headsets

    University of Nevada Las Vegas to Build VR Learning Hub for STEM Courses

    A new immersive learning center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is tapping into the power of virtual reality to support STEM engagement and student success. The institution has partnered with Dreamscape Learn on the initiative, which will incorporate the company's interactive VR platform into introductory STEM courses.

  • futuristic crystal ball with holographic data projections

    Call for Opinions: 2025 Predictions for Higher Ed IT

    How will the technology landscape in higher education change in the coming year? We're inviting our readership to weigh in with their predictions, wishes, or worries for 2025.

  • abstract pattern of interlocking circuits, hexagons, and neural network shapes

    Anthropic Announces Cautious Support for New California AI Regulation Legislation

    Anthropic has announced its support for an amended version of California’s Senate Bill 1047 (SB 1047), the "Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act," because of revisions to the bill the company helped to influence, but not without some reservations.