Contacts: Jack R. Warner, Executive Director and CEO
jack.warner@sdbor.edu

Janelle Toman, Director of Communications
Janelle.toman@sdbor.edu

Telephone: (605) 773-3455

Fax: (605) 773-5320

www.sdbor.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Interactive Dashboards Illustrate Higher Education Data

RAPID CITY, S.D. – With the help of modern software technology, the South Dakota Board of Regents has created a set of interactive dashboards to help make key data points about public higher education more understandable and useful to the public and policymakers.

Regents’ staff this week unveiled a set of interactive visualizations that focus on higher education data points of particular interest. The dashboards are found online at http://www.sdbor.edu/dashboards/. “The fundamental aim of these dashboards is to convert complex data into useful information,” said Jack Warner, the regents’ executive director and CEO.

Interactive dashboards allow users to modify certain features of the dashboard view online, using filters, drill-downs, or variables to focus on data points of particular interest. These controls give users maximum flexibility to locate and analyze data relevant to a given topic.

Initial data currently posted on the regents’ dashboard website present information on South Dakota students’ transition from high school to the public universities, distance education, graduate production and placement, proficiency exam results, affordability, minimum progression standards, and freshmen migration rates. More data sets will be developed into interactive dashboards and posted on the website over time.

“These dashboards represent our effort to place maximum information into the hands of our stakeholders: board members, higher education staff, lawmakers, outside agencies, and the general public,” Warner said. “Our goals are to increase transparency, inform public conversations about the university system, and raise the visibility of public higher education in those dialogues.”

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