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

  • person signing a bill at a desk with a faint glow around the document. A tablet and laptop are subtly visible in the background, with soft colors and minimal digital elements

    California Governor Signs AI Content Safeguards into Law

    California Governor Gavin Newsom has officially signed off on a series of landmark artificial intelligence bills, signaling the state’s latest efforts to regulate the burgeoning technology, particularly in response to the misuse of sexually explicit deepfakes. The legislation is aimed at mitigating the risks posed by AI-generated content, as concerns grow over the technology's potential to manipulate images, videos, and voices in ways that could cause significant harm.

  • close-up illustration of a hand signing a legislative document

    California Passes AI Safety Legislation, Awaits Governor's Signature

    California lawmakers have overwhelmingly approved a bill that would impose new restrictions on AI technologies, potentially setting a national precedent for regulating the rapidly evolving field. The legislation, known as S.B. 1047, now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. He has until the end of September to decide whether to sign it into law.

  • illustration of a VPN network with interconnected nodes and lines forming a minimalist network structure

    Report: Increasing Number of Vulnerabilities in OpenVPN

    OpenVPN, a popular open source virtual private network (VPN) system integrated into millions of routers, firmware, PCs, mobile devices and other smart devices, is leaving users open to a growing list of threats, according to a new report from Microsoft.

  • interconnected cubes and circles arranged in a grid-like structure

    Hugging Face Gradio 5 Offers AI-Powered App Creation and Enhanced Security

    Hugging Face has released version 5 of its Gradio open source platform for building machine learning (ML) applications. The update introduces a suite of features focused on expanding access to AI, including a novel AI-powered app creation tool, enhanced web development capabilities, and bolstered security measures.