IS428 AY2019-20T2 Assign MELANIE TAN RI FANG

Project Motivation

Every two years, SMU Libraries conduct a comprehensive survey in which faculty, students and staff have the opportunity to rate various aspects of SMU library's services. The survey provides SMU libraries with input to help enhance existing services and to anticipate emerging needs of SMU faculty, students and staff. The latest survey is currently on going and will be ended by 17th February 2020.

The 2018 Survey Results, past reports are mainly made-up of pages of tables, which are very difficult to comprehend. In view of this, I will apply appropriate data visualisation to transform these tables into visual representation that allow SMU libraries to gain useful insights.

Project Objective

Use visual analytics approach to reveal the level of services provided by SMU libraries as perceived by:

1. Undergraduate Students
2. Postgraduate Students
3. Faculty
4. Staff

Introduction to Gap Analysis

The gap analysis essentially takes into consideration the ranking of importance as well as the level of Performance.
- This can be computationally done by (Performance – Importance)
- The negative difference would then be deemed as the gap in which the library is underperforming/lacking.
- A positive difference would mean that the library is performing well or meeting the requirement needs of these survey responders.
- Under the gap analysis graph
- The red line represents “Importance”
- The grey bar chart represents “Performance”
- The right side of the graph shows the difference between Importance and Performance.
- If it shows negative, it means that Performance < Importance
- If it shows positive, it means that Performance > Importance

This is the overview of the gap analysis conducted by combining ALL responses together. We can see that "Facilities and Equipment" have the widest negative gap difference of 27.41% while "Service Delivery" has the lowest negative gap difference of 5.75%.

Overview

Main Responders:

1. A quick glance at the “Positions” graph, we are able to see that the majority of the responses are from the undergraduates.
2. Hence, when looking at the overall data for the Likert scale, it would be good to keep in mind that the data shows a more biased view towards the undergraduate’s opinions as compared to the other stakeholders.
3. Using a bar chart, we can see that among all the schools, relevant stakeholders from the Business school contribute to a total of 38.94% while the other schools spreading evenly around 9-15%.
4. Also using a bar chart, we can see that the majority of the survey responders patronize the library on a weekly basis, following by daily, monthly and quarterly. Hence, we can conclude that the library usually sees a high volume of visitors weekly and they should cater sufficient resources to satisfy the needs of these stakeholders.

Likert Scale:

1. Having grouped the questions into 4 categories namely; Communication, Facilities and Equipment, Information Resources and Service Delivery.
2. Using the Likert scale, we can see that “Facilities and Equipment” is ranked the highest and “Service Delivery” is ranked the lowest.
3. From this, it is more evident for the library to know which area they should focus on when it comes to improving their services.

NPS:

1. We can see that undergraduates have one of the lowest promoter score and also the highest number of detractors amongst all the other stakeholders.
2. Using the gap analysis to analyze the gaps within the relevant categories; Communication, Service Delivery, Facilities and Equipment and Information Resources.
3. Results has shown that “Facilities and Equipment” has one of the highest gaps identified as compared to the other categories.
4. However, we might keep in mind that the result is largely contributed by Undergraduates as we can see that Undergraduates has the highest number of responses to this survey as compared to other stakeholders.

Undergraduate

Undergraduates

1. Business students patronizes the library more than other schools
2. High frequency of visits mainly from 2 components – Daily (36.12%) and Weekly (44.13%)
3. At first glance, undergraduates seem to have the greatest number of detractors compared to other stakeholders.
4. For the library to dive deeper into analyzing the spread of ranking over than range (1-7) , the data is visualized as a highlight table, where the library is able to toggle between each question to look at the spread of answers. Where the lighter colors represent a smaller percentage and it gradually moves to darker colors where it represents a larger percentage opting for that ranking.

Gap Analysis
Conducting a gap analysis has revealed the areas with the largest gaps In term of categories, “Facilities and Equipment” is seen to have the widest gap with a total value of 29.18%, which is almost double the amount from other categories.

1. I can find a quiet place in the library to study when I need to. (53.49%)
2. I can find a place in the library to work in a group when I need to. (39.74%)
3. Printing, Scanning and photocopying facilities in the library meet my needs. (33.5%)

Through the usage of Likert Scale, Highlight Table and Gap Analysis, I have identified the relevant areas that has needs the most improvement, so the library can now focus on these 3 areas to close these performance gaps.

Postgraduate

Postgraduate

It is the similar situation for postgraduates where “Facilities and Equipment” is no doubt the highest in terms of negative gap performance with a value of 22.12%.
- Again, this is a recurring problem as revealed in the undergraduate’s category.
- Based on the NPS, it is evident that postgraduates have one of the highest promoter score and one of the least number of detractors.
- The library should take note that that the category “Facilities and Equipment” is one of the several important factors that are leading to negative feedback which might be the ultimate cause for a high number of detractors, or little promoters.
- Through the overall gap analysis, we can see that “Facilities and Equipment” has the highest with 22.12%

1. “I can find a quiet place in the library when I need to” (38.65%)
2. “I can find a quiet place in the library to work in a group when I need to” (29.84%)
3. “Printing, scanning and photocopy facilities in the library meet my needs” (29.34%)

Having scaled down to these individual questions that the library should focus on, there is a better focus point for the library to start.

Faculty

Faculty

Looking at the overall gap analysis for “Faculty”, it has revealed that the main category faced is “Information Resources” at 29.39% almost triple the amount of gap compared to other stakeholders. Comparing this figure to the category “Facilities and Equipment” where it is a category that has the biggest gap. This is probably prevalent to the nature of the needs of their “Faculty” members, where the usage of the library is to source for information. With that said, we will dive deeper into looking at which specific questions the library should focus on under the category “Information Resources”

1. “Online resources are useful for my studies and help me with my learning and research needs” (45.28%)
2. “When I am away from campus, I can access the library resources and services I need” (30.36%)
3. “The library search engine enables me to find relevant library resources quickly” (42.59%)

From this, we have then successfully identified the questions in which the library should focus on.

An example, would be the following graph below:

Staff

Through the overview of the overall gap analysis, we can see that the category identified would be “Information Resources”

1. “Information resources located in the library (eg, books, journals, DVD) meet my research and learning needs” (17.17%)

Apart from this major gap, the rest of the questions have almost an average spread of 6%.