NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT SERVICES, no. 142, Summer 2013 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ss.20050 71 7 Developing and Using Dashboard Indicators in Student Affairs Assessment Joshua J. Mitchell, Andrew J. Ryder When preparing to assess a project or program, to gather data in support of assessment goals, and to disseminate information to the appropriate audi- ence, consideration must be given to: “What type of information will be most compelling?” (Petitt and McIntosh, 2011, p. 208). Stephen Few (2006) expanded that recommendation in his discussions about visually displaying data and creating dashboards. He explained that it is important to know not only what information will be most compelling, but also what types of data are viable and available (for example, direct evidence, indirect evidence, dashboard indicators). This chapter focuses on dashboard indica- tors and how student affairs personnel can use them to monitor operational processes, analyze important data for trends, and manage achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Information on other assessment data such as indirect and direct evidence can be found in other publications (see Bresciani, Zelna, and Anderson, 2002/2004; Ewell and Jones, 1993; Petitt and McIntosh, 2011; Schuh and Associates, 2009). Dashboards evolved as a way to monitor the most critical business metrics for performance, enabling problem areas to be identified and addressed quickly (Eckerson, 2011; Few, 2006). Dashboards first appeared on the higher education landscape in the late 1990s and continue to be implemented in campuses across the country (Rice, Abshire, Christakis, and Sherman, 2010; Ruben, 1999) in light of pressures for accountability (Doerfel and Ruben, 2002) and strategic management of increasingly scarce financial resources (Schuh and Associates, 2009). We begin by offering an overview of the origins of dashboards, from the development of executive information systems in the 1980s to balanced scorecards in the 1990s to the emergence of the interactive, data-driven Dashboard systems are increasingly popular as assessment and performance management tools in higher education. This chapter examines the use of dashboards in student affairs, including examples of key indicators and considerations for developing and implementing these tools.