Education Graphic

Sept. 26 - Oct. 2

This information graphic on educational engagement can be found on the USA Today web site. The graphic gives credit to Ron Coddington, Anthony DeBarros and Chad Palmer of USA Today. The graphic also states that the information came from the National Survey of Student Engagement results.

One of the strengths of this graphic is the information it provides on where the statistics came from and how the data was gathered. This helps readers think critically about whether or not these numbers are believable and trustworthy. Another strength of the piece is that viewers can interact with the graphic and search for colleges with which they are familiar. If this graphic only included statistics on a few large universities that I’m not familiar with, the numbers don’t mean anything to me. Because I can search for colleges I do know, the graphic automatically becomes meaningful to each person who views it.

One of the weaknesses of the information graphic is that it makes it difficult to compare colleges. While I can view each college separately, there’s no way for me to view two colleges side-by-side to compare survey results. Providing the ability to compare two or more colleges would enhance the piece by providing more meaning to the statistics. Being able to compare colleges against each other would give more meaning to the numbers. The graphic does show the percentage for the selected school and for “institutional type avg,” but it doesn’t explain what the latter means. Average for that SIZE of school? Average for schools in that AREA? Average for schools that are undergrad only?

This graphic on education is showing viewers how engaged college students are in the classroom and in their education. The blurb at the top of the graphic says that it is showing “student involvement in key practices associated with learning, persistence and graduation” based on five benchmarks: level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment. The graphic also compares how freshman students view their engagement in college compared to how seniors view their engagement in college.

Colleges who have filled out the survey will be interested to see how they compare to other schools (or institutional type averages, whatever that means). Educators will be interested to see if what they’re doing in the classroom is expressed through these student surveys.

The graphic design is clean and simple. Viewers can interact through the map for location, by alphabet or by institution type. Once a college is selected, the results appear to the far right of the graphic while still showing the search options. This makes it user-friendly as viewers can shift back and forth with ease.