Visualization Tools for the Classroom

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Visualization Tools for the Classroom

• Karin Kirk, Cathy Manduca, Carol Ormand
• Science Education Resource CenterCarleton
  College

the Science Education Resource Center at
Carleton College
SERC
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Overall outline

• Intro and think-pair-share
• The Take Home Message
• What makes a good visualization?
• How visualizations are used
• What faculty are looking for
• Barriers to use
• Affective impacts of visualizations
• SERC websites visualizations and tools for
  educators

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Introduction

• Geoscience is a highly visual field, and
  effective use of visual tools can enhance student
  learning, appeal to students emotions and help
  them acquire skills for interpreting visual
  information.
• This requires
• The appropriate visual tool
• Applying it effectively in the classroom

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• Pedagogic reasons to use visualizations
• Permits observation of the unobservable
• Renderings showing 3 dimensions or changes over
  time make complex processes much easier to
  understand (reduces cognitive load)
• Visualizations allow students to construct their
  own mental images that stick with them
• Theyre cool!

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Think-Pair-Share

• If you are a developer of visualization tools
• Imagine your visualization tool being used in the
  classroom. How is it being used?

If you are a teacher using visualization
tools How do you want to use visualizations in
the classroom? What type of visualization tools
do you need?

• Identify
• common similarities
• gaps between developers and educators

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Big take home message students dont see what
you see

• Geoscientists (you) have sophisticated spatial
  reasoning skills
• Mental models of processes
• Familiarity with reading maps, contours, scales
• Geography knowledge
• Looking and seeing are learned skills.
• The knowledge you bring to the image affects your
  experience with it.
• All of this improves with guided practice.

Frequency distribution of particles in the
atmosphere by size as developed by Whitby (1978).
Classroom scenario described by Perry Samson,
Univ. Michigan.
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1. What do you see illustrated in this diagram?
2. How much of what you see is a function of
   geoscience that you have learned?

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An example of using visual data in the classroom
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Another example
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So, what makes an effective visualization for
teaching?
http//serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualizati
on
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1. The same things that work well in designing
any educational activity work well in designing
or selecting a visualization.

• Start with the intended outcome and goals.
• What you are trying to accomplish with the
  visualization?
• What are you trying to teach? What do you want
  the students to learn?

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• 2. Students don't always see what faculty are
  seeing when viewing a visualization.Just as in
  other aspects of learning, what students see
  and learn is built on what they already know.
• Understanding what students know and see can be
  addressed on four levels
• Cognitive what do students focus on in a
  visualization?
• Educational how does the visualization build on
  what they already know?
• Geoscience how do students understand and
  interpret the processes that are represented?
• Affective how does the visualization make
  students feel?

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2. (continued) How can we better align what we
want students to see with what they are actually
seeing?

• Map the structure and content of the information
  to be conveyed on the structure and content of
  the diagram.
• Use extra-pictorial devices like arrows and
  guidelines unambiguously.
• Craft diagram to explain, not just show.
• Check to see if students learn what is intended
• (Tversky, On the Cutting Edge workshop)

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• 3. Simple is usually better.The power of
  visualizations comes from their ability to
  clarify relationships rather than from
  reproducing exactly the natural world. Thus, a
  design which emphasizes the desired relationships
  or information is likely to be more successful
  than one that makes every effort to be realistic.
  Students can become confused when elements of a
  diagram closely resemble the actual entity they
  represent in the real world
• (Uttal et al., 2006).

Over-simplification can create
misconceptions Realism is helpful is some cases
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Mazur, in progress mazur-www.harvard.edu Mayer,
2001 Multimedia Learning
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• 4. Context is important and is easily
  lost.Effective visualizations maintain the
  contextual relationships between the different
  parts of the visualization and between the
  visualization and whatever it represents.
• For example, when a series of diagrams are used
  to explain a process, it is important to keep the
  student aware of how each step in the progression
  relates to the overall process.

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• 5. Visualizations are most effective if their
  organization reflects the mental organization
  that the student is creating.
• For example, if students create a series of still
  images in their mind to represent a geologic
  process, a series of still images will be most
  effective in conveying information. Similarly, if
  students create a mental movie, an animation may
  be more effective. (Tversky et al., 2002 )

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• 6. Guidance helps.Visualizations present a large
  number of relationships at a single time. Visual
  or textual clues can focus attention on
  meaningful items or guide the learner through the
  visualization in a particular order.

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What are different ways faculty use
visualizations in the classroom?

• Show and tell in lecture, illustrated example
• Interactive lecture a visualization is paired
  with a think-pair-share, minute paper, concept
  test, or clicker question.
• Lab activity students are guided through an
  activity where they interact with a visualization
  tool to look at data sets and explore spatial or
  temporal relationships
• Independent exploration students follow
  instructions on their own, often guided by
  questions provided by the instructor
• Reflection/synthesis students create a drawing
  or concept sketch
• Assessment visualization is part of a problem
  set or exam, especially after they have already
  seen something similar in class or lab.

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What are faculty looking for when selecting a
visualization tool?

• Fits the learning goals of their course
• Is consistent with the level of expertise of the
  students
• Communicates an important point
• Helps students overcome common areas of
  difficulty
• Allows students to work with data and manipulate
  the imagery to create a deeper understanding
• Educational value of visualization is greater
  than the trouble to set it up and run it

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Factors Affecting Use

• Faculty like...
• Browser-friendly
• Familiar file formats
• Ability to preview before committing to download,
  or better yet, run right from the web.
• Having control over scale, variables, parameters
• Intuitive the students will likely be able to
  jump right in
• Data and imagery that are available for re-use
• Free

• Faculty tend to avoid...
• Tools that require a special platform
• Alphabet soup of file formats
• Big commitment of downloading, installing, and
  fiddling, prior to assessing if this is the right
  tool for the job.
• Inflexible
• Requires intervention from instructor (i.e.
  ignore that part, dont forget that the colors
  are backwards...)
• Requires proprietary data
• Expensive

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Affective impacts of using visualizations

• Illustrations elicit emotional response (i.e. Al
  Gores CO2 graph)
• Using visual tools provides a welcome break from
  traditional lecture
• Interactive nature lets students be in control
  (Reeve and Jang, 2006)
• Allows students to explore, hypothesize, play
• Students can see their effect on a larger picture
  (i.e. their own data set as part of larger data
  series)
• Todays students are comfortable with technical
  media many will appreciate activities that take
  advantage of technology.
• However, dont spoil the fun with overly complex,
  intimidating, buggy, or counterintuitive
  interfaces.

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SERC has tools to help you

• Collections of visualizations for teaching
• Collections of activities using visualizations
• Recommended readings and an annotated
  bibliography
• Workshop program
• Links to related sites across the SERC websites
  (Google Earth, Teaching with Visualizations)
• Visualization collections embedded into many
  geoscience topics
• Share your favorite visualization or activity

http//serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualizati
on