Weekly Briefing: Is Your Covid-19 Dashboard Useful?

Not all coronavirus-tracking dashboards are built the same. That can be a problem. ADVERTISEMENT [logo] Was this newsletter forwarded to you? [Please sign up to receive your own copy.]( You’ll support our journalism and ensure that you continue to receive our emails. [Read this newsletter on the web](. How useful is your Covid-19 dashboard? [image] Photo Illustration by The Chronicle If your college reopened in person this fall, the odds are administrators have created a Covid-19 dashboard to assess the level of risk on campus. Most dashboards show the total number of positive cases and other details, such as how many students have been tested. Sounds fine, right? Think again. There is no uniform standard for what to include and how often to update Covid-19 dashboards. Some institutions update their numbers once a week. Others update daily. Some remove the previous day's numbers when posting a new day's count, removing all context. With those variations, and many others, it can be hard to tell whether your campus is actually safe. The New York Times assembled a national database of coronavirus cases at colleges, but warned against using the numbers to make comparisons because of such variations in reporting. The problems have become more visible as college campuses have emerged as the latest [coronavirus hot spots](. Colleges are also weighing how much transparency is appropriate. At the start of its fall semester, Arizona State University refused to share its Covid-19 case numbers, due in part, it said, to privacy concerns. But [privacy experts have said]( that making Covid-19 numbers public does not violate federal rules. The university created a Covid-19 dashboard this month after facing faculty, student, and parent demands. Then there's the question of a college's image. Administrators may say they're pulling out all the stops to keep the virus at bay; the dashboard can tell another story. Data can be unflattering, but on the other hand, not sharing the numbers can be even worse for a college's public perception and potential infection rate. [Our Michael Vasquez has this in-depth report on dashboards](. Paid for and Created by Cisco [The Next Normal]( Digital transformation is accelerating as a result of the global pandemic, and distance learning providers are doing their best to keep up with their partners’ needs and challenges. ADVERTISEMENT Subscribe to The Chronicle Our mission, at a time of crisis and uncertainty, is to ensure you have the information you need to make the best decisions for your institution, your career, and your students. Please consider subscribing today to sustain our continuing coverage. [Subscribe Today]( Lagniappe. - Learn. [This is why]( everything is sold out. - Read. A man asks his neighbor for a tomato, then [this personal essay]( takes a surprising turn. - Listen. As the nation mourns Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who died last week, [listen to this episode]( of the podcast More Perfect on her legacy. - Watch. If you're a fan of The Great British Bake Off, or even if you're not, I cannot recommend [The Great Pottery Throw Down]( enough. The BBC program began in 2015 and is available to stream stateside on HBO Max. The British pottery competition is, dare I say, more soothing than the baking show. Cheers, —Fernanda Correction: [Last week's newsletter]( misattributed a quotation, "I hope we don't become too focused on ratings," to W. Kent Fuchs, president of the University of Florida. The speaker was actually Bernie Machen, his predecessor. This Week‘s Top Reads THE REVIEW [Higher Ed Has a Silicon Valley Problem]( By Evan Goldstein [image] Jill Lepore on how algorithms came to supersede art, and the distorting effects of money in academe. 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