The Art of Visualizing Survey Data Steve Wexler, Director of Research The eLearning Guild

Agenda The eLearning Guild and how we conduct surveys and gather data Visualizing survey data – when things go smoothly Visualizing survey data – when things don’t go so smoothly Say hello to the Likert scale and to heat maps/highlight tables Anatomy of a survey visualization Another case Q&A

How The eLearning Guild Gathers Data Foundation profile information Surveys

When things go smoothly

When things go not so smoothly

Are these items sorted correctly? It’s hard to tell.

Likert items ̶ example Strongly agree = 5 Somewhat agree = 3 Somewhat disagree = 1 Strongly disagree = 0

Anatomy of a survey visualization Question from the Guild’s survey on Mobile Learning.

Anatomy, cont’d Are these items sorted correctly? It’s hard to tell.

Anatomy, cont’d Use a calculated field to weigh the responses.

Anatomy, cont’d Now the sort order and relative relationships really pop out.

Anatomy, cont’d Things get even uglier when you attempt to correlate with another survey answer. Here we break the data down by where members are with implementing Mobile Learning.

Anatomy, cont’d Highlight tables to the rescue. Dark blue means “lots of agreement” and Dark orange means “lots of disagreement.” It’s very easy to see where there’s accord and where there’s discord. Many times the option to choose a highlight table is disabled. There are ways to get around that…

Another case

Another case, cont’d So, which product has the best break-out rooms? It’s not so easy to tell.

Another case, cont’d Weighted responses make it easy to see how to rank the products.

Another case, cont’d Highlight tables. They rock. In this the best product is the one with the most dark blue.

Success gallery

Q & A Steve Wexler The eLearning Guild