NCIA UCD report v3.pdf

NCIA UCD report v3.pdf - page 1/24 - Finding and using data to understand uni…

Finding and using data to understand university impact

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We believe that involving communities leads to better decision-making.

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1. How user-centred design can transform university civic activity with data-driven dashboards

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dashboard may give its users a distorted impression of control or certainty. Civic universities should aim to create shared understanding and activity with local stakeholders, not act as a distant and powerful mission control. A lack of clear purpose or cross-purposes can also produce dashboards without a clear use. Dashboards that are not helpful are not used � and dashboards that are not used are not maintained, worsening data quality issues.

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2. Challenging assumptions with user-centred design

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Dashboard wanted to answer. This uncovered a spectrum of needs, including accessibility requirements, that informed design. By understanding why someone would use the dashboard, we could specify detailed user requirements and begin formulating potential solutions. These solutions were then refined and tested further in subsequent workshops.

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� User needs scenarios: We developed four example users, or user personas, based on staff roles: evaluation, partnerships, community engagement, and data expert. These personas were based on the information the user testing group shared about their roles and responsibilities when they applied to be involved. We observed that the user testing group broadly saw themselves as cutting across all these roles, showing the holistic nature of the civic university work. Participants highlighted that equitable prosperity must be a key focus, demonstrating impact, and proving a key attraction for students. They also acknowledged the need for sensitivity around how inequalities data is represented and shared, for example in terms of reflections on local areas.

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A multidisciplinary approach

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3. Prototyping the Civic Impact Dashboard

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These approaches were used to test whether the Institute had made the right assumptions about what university staff need to address their data goals. Rather than dealing in the abstract, presenting something users could interact with allowed for concrete feedback on what the proposed solution was, and was not, addressing.

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these operational challenges have been resolved. In fact, long before looking at external data to understand impact, university staff face issues understanding exactly what university civic activity is and encompasses.

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Data sources for university impact Figure 2: Prototype screens exploring arts and culture impact

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The prototype dashboard screens (Figure 2) opened an important conversation about how to integrate data from multiple sources, both external and internal to the university. Users wanted to see a granular, place-based picture of their universitys impact on their local community. However, as data is collected at different geographies, it can be difficult to map this effectively in a place (eg, data collected at ward level compared to across institution-specific geographies, such as Integrated Care Boards). The exercise of linking different data (eg, between different points in time, qualitative and quantitative, external and internal data) was identified as key for drawing out a picture of university civic engagement.

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4. Building the Civic Impact Dashboard with accessibility in focus

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Scoping the dashboard solution

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The live demo Figure 2: Screenshots of the Tableau prototype

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We then presented via a live demonstration and screenshots the prototype dashboard with:

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remained that their pre-existing expertise, and primary focus on data, meant they struggled to situate themselves as laypeople. In this context, the focus on accessibility required further introductory workshops that could have primed the user group to provide guidance and information on the importance of inclusive and accessible digital design and then allocate time with them to reflect on these principles in terms of the dashboard.

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5. Launching the Civic Impact Dashboard prototype

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The Civic Impact Dashboard is a data visualisation tool to support HEI staff to understand and explore the civic contribution of their university to their local area. Whereas many HEIs will already collect internal data about the impact of their programmes, the dashboard intends to supplement this activity by:

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Through this process, we discovered several insights for how HEI staff use data:

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6. Supporting universities to think

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navigate the dashboard; where they feel confident, confused, or lost; and which data feels most or least useful.

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Many HEIs already collect internal data about the impact of their programmes. The dashboard can supplement this activity by: