What is Tableau?  Tableau is an interactive electronic tool used to visually display and interrogate data. For assessment of student learning, dashboards have been created for Course and General Education results. Tableau is also currently used at ECC to visualize and study enrollment, overall course success, degree/certificate completion and other metrics of interest.

How Can Tableau Inform My Teaching? 

By visualizing outcomes data in Tableau, in the above example, English 101 faculty can see that on the outcome chosen (Engl101-01, which deals with drafting and using feedback), 87% of students’ papers met or exceeded expectations (the light blue and blue bars) and 13% of students’ papers were not yet meeting expectations. Looking at data in this way can answer questions about whether students are meeting learning goals and help show where more attention is needed. 

When results are below what faculty hope for, considerations can be made for interventions like more in-class practice time, approaching the topic through a different activity, more out-of-class resources, group guided study sessions, or many other small-scale or large-scale strategies.   

• Tableau provides visual representation of quantitative data to make it easier to make observations about student learning. 

• It allows for easier data disaggregation, which breaks down results into smaller, strategic parts.

• Overall student averages can mask important differences in outcomes:  which groups are not currently meeting learning expectations as we've defined and measured them? Which groups are doing well? 

• Viewing outcomes data, especially when disaggregated, can allow teachers and departments to ask “Are we meeting the needs of all of our students?” 

Accessing Tableau

Assessment dashboards on Tableau can be accessed by anyone signed-in with an ECC gmail address. Previously, this could only be done while on campus, though this has been resolved as of February 2024. Click on one of the three dashboard tiles below "General Education Outcomes, Program-Level Outcomes, and Course-Level Outcomes" that you'd like to peruse.  (NOTE: the dashboard may take a solid minute to load, just be patient. If you have other access problems, contact Dave Rudden.)

Instructions for Using Tableau

The slideshow below, created by SLAAC, details the steps for accessing the assessment dashboards in Tableau and adjusting filters to view different course and student data sets. For addiontal support contact Lisa Wiehle, Manager of Outcomes Assessment, at lwiehle@elgin.edu. 

How Does Data Get Into Tableau?

ECC's Institutional Research department manages the architecture of and data within the Tableau dashboards. Assessment data is pulled from two primary means - The D2L Standards Tool or a Custom Data Upload and then matched with a unique identifier to student and course variables, such as Gender, Age, Modality or Term Duration. Learn more about each method below.

• Resources for using the D2L Standards Tool (ppt)

• Getting started with a Custom Data Upload (doc)