Coursera: Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau Review

Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau is the 4th course in the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization University of California, Davis on Coursera. The 4-week course focuses on composing visualizations in Tableau into interactive dashboards and presentations. The course builds on concepts covered in previous courses in the specialization and reuses some of the same data sets and visualizations created in those courses, so it is highly recommended that you go through those courses first. Grading is based on weekly quizzes and peer graded assignments, but grades are locked to paying students so you won't be able to submit your assignments and complete the course as a freeware student.

The course has two lecturers, Hunter Whitney, who covers theoretical material and considerations related to planning and telling data stories and Govind Acharya, who focuses on the technical details and practical considerations of making dashboards and stories in Tableau. The first week covers storytelling with data a high level, so it doesn't really get into using Tableau at all. The second week focuses on creating key performance indicators to drive data stories. Weeks 3 and 4 walk you through the process of creating dashboards and stories in Tableau. The Tableau walkthroughs don't appear use a prepared script so they have a conversational tone. This makes the instruction feel a little rough around the edges, but also makes the walkthroughs more personal than they would be if presented more formally.

Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau does a fine job covering the basics of making dashboards and stories in Tableau, but the course devotes too great a proportion of its content to non-technical concepts and considerations. Locked assignments mean freeware students won't get much practice using Tableau outside of following along with the lecture walkthroughs.

I give Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau 3 out of 5 stars: Okay.