Dean’s Dashboard
The Dean’s Dashboard
The Dean’s Dashboard is a free, computerized, open source tool that helps the leaders of educational institutions manage their schools more efficiently. Schools that produce health workers are complex institutions. Their leaders must manage a number of disparate parts, including tracking of student enrollment, performance, and attrition; staffing of theoretical and practical courses; generating income; procuring educational equipment and materials; and ensuring the availability of learning facilities, such as classrooms and clinical laboratories, and infrastructure, such as water, electricity and Internet. The Dean’s Dashboard turns data into information, empowering school leaders to translate complicated data and statistical analysis into simple yet meaningful visual representations, such as charts, graphs, pivot tables, and maps. The dashboard allows school leaders to systematically define strategic, indicator-based goals for their educational programs and routinely monitor progress toward achieving them. Charts and graphs created and monitored on the dashboard can be easily saved, shared, and integrated into presentations, brochures, websites, and other key management materials. A school’s management team can download and customize the standard dashboard linked to this page, or build their own customized dashboard using the most recent version of the powerful DHIS2 software. The step-by-step user’s manual and DHIS2 expert community provide guidance and support to install, customize, and maximize the use of the dashboard for years of data-driven decision making.
A Dashboard for Educational Institutions
Similar to the dashboard of an automobile with its speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge, the Dean’s Dashboard is meant to measure progress and chart trends, indicating either improvement over time or need for strategic action. The dashboard visually displays progress and trends at the chosen level of a department, school, faculty, or other larger group. Charts, graphs, maps, and other information objects can be easily customized to adjust to changing circumstances as well as address potential “what if” questions that often arise when managing an educational institution. For example, school managers can revise thresholds and targets to encourage further progress after achieving an initial goal; add or remove key performance indicators and goals as the institution’s educational mission evolves; and modify the way trends are analyzed by, for example, disaggregating groups by age or gender or program
The Dean’s Dashboard is most effective as part of a strategic planning process. Before a school can implement a dashboard, it needs access to high-quality, routinely collected, individual-level data. While data are usable in any easily accessed format, having data in a digital system is ideal, even in electronic spreadsheets. Pilot institutions found that setting up the dashboard’s data and reports was relatively easy once the DHIS 2 interface was mastered. After a representative of an institution has been trained to configure and utilize DHIS 2, few resources are required to continue and expand its usefulness. In terms of infrastructure needed, two options exist—in the cloud or local to the institution. Small institutions may prefer to pay for a cloud-based implementation (that is, to access and use the software entirely online) as purchasing and maintaining servers may be prohibitive. Institutions with strong ICT units may prefer to install the software locally in their data centers. Configuring and implementing the system is not overly complex, but support will be essential to new users.
There are several resources available:
--A demonstration site where visitors can use the software
--A user manual
--A community of DHIS 2 users
--Many DHIS 2 technical training opportunities
