COE Site Navigation Guide

The landing page has individual icons, each comprising a link to a category of data visualizations. Clicking on the icon, (or the title or the descriptive text) will load a pop-up dialog containing a list of the COE data visualizations in that category.

For example if the user clicked on the "PK-12 Enrollment Trends" icon the following pop-up would display:

After selecting an icon from the landing page, a dialog pops up displaying a list of all the data visualizations in that category. To display a specific data visualization (chart, table, graph, etc.,) click anywhere on the title, the descriptive text, or the thumbnail image.

At the top of every page on the COE site, there is a navigation menu referring to each category of data visualizations. Hovering over the yellow category name will initiate a drop-down menu with a link to each chart, table, or graph in that category. Once a user becomes familiar with the visualizations, navigation by drop-down menu will probably become the preferred method to get around the site.

On the top, left-hand corner of each data visualization, there is a link labeled "Click here for information on chart data". Clicking this link will bring up a modal dialog box containing important information used in that page's charts, tables, and other data visualizations, including the source of each bit of information, and definitions of various data sets.

Most data visualizations allow viewing the subject by school years. The school year picker control allows a user to pick a specific year to view.

Initially, the year picker defaults to the most recent year in which data is available.

To select another year, the user clicks on the blue pull-down control to the right of the year (see red arrow), and selects their desired year.

Most data visualizations default to having (All) school districts. This is useful for reviewing state-wide information. A user can "drill-down" to review the information from one or more specific school districts, as follows:

To start, the user opens up the district list, and clears the check mark from first entry, (All). This will display a scroll-able list of school districts. None of the school districts will be selected.

Using the scroll bar, the user can locate their desired school district or districts, and select the check-box(es) associated with them. Click the Apply button at the bottom of the window to change the data in the charts/tables to reflect the selected district(s).

Since the list of school districts has over 300 items, it can get confusing as to whether any of the school districts are currently selected. A quick way to check is to mouse hover the control. A filter icon with a red X will appear, indicating one or more school districts are selected. Clicking on this icon will select all districts in the list (the same as if the (All) checkbox was checked).

Some users find it quicker to use this filter's "search by name" function. To use it, the user first clears all selected districts by un-checking the mark from the (All) checkbox. This will display a list of school districts, along with a search box.

By typing partial names into the search box, the user can review all districts containing the typed in text. This provides a very powerful way of quickly scanning through the large list of district names. Once selections have been made, click the Apply button at the bottom of the window to change the data in the charts/tables to reflect the selected district(s).

A user can scroll through an alphabetized list of school districts to find their desired district.

But if a user wants to compare information from a desired district against other districts of the same size, they would need a combination of an "Enrollment Category" filter and a "School District" list.

The "Select Size(s) (Enrollment Category) filter" will filter out the "School District" list by whichever sizes are selected. The user would first uncheck the "(All)" checkbox to deselect all size categories.

The user would then check the size category that their desired district falls under. (In this case, the user selected all districts with an "Enrollment Category" size of 7,500 or more)

The user now has a list of all the districts that are of similar size to theirs, allowing the user to compare various information between the list of school districts.