The five focus areas defined below represent Visualization and Modeling Theme Team's intellectual efforts during the years 1998 and 1999. These areas cover a broad cross-section of the research and development efforts of the VisMod community (largely represented by the participants at the 1998 Visualization and Modeling Workshop).
The intellectual directions of the VisMod theme team align with existing intellectual directions in the field. The seed projects that VisMod funded were intended to extend work in specific areas; these relationships are indicated below.
This area focuses on the use of different representational forms by children in grades K-6. Students at this age face particular developmental challenges in understanding and manipulating abstract representations. What kinds of tools exist that support student use of manipulation of representations in science and math? What do we know about students' abilities to use such representations?
Related funded project: Boxer/MIMS Computer Modeling Project
This group focuses on the underlying engines that drive models of scientific phenomena. These simulation, or modeling, engines may be designed by researchers or built by students. However, a common interest is in understanding when it is appropriate to use quantitative or qualitative models, how students use or create models in learning contexts, and the design of common tools for building quantitative models.
Related funded projects: Modeling Malaria Project
In contrast to the modeling group, which focuses on more general purpose tools, this group looks at the use of representations designed to communicate specific ideas in science, math, or technology. Much as Feynman diagrams were employed to address a specific kind of problem, this group explores the cognitive benefits of these tailored visual explanations. This group also addresses the role of animation or video in learning. This group offers the most direct investigation of the proposed affordances of visual representations for learning (i.e., information density, pattern recognition, etc.).
Related funded project: Exploring Self-Explanatory Simulators for Middle-School Science
Visualizations are not used in a void, but in a curricular context. What do we know about the kinds of instructional frameworks that support the use of visualization and modeling tools? How do these frameworks function in different environments? This group focuses on the pedagogical implications of different instructional approaches, and also works toward "learning environment convergence": the idea that many of the learning environment frameworks in use (e.g., WISE, CSILE, Legacy) have a great many similarities as well as differences, and that the best features of each might be combined into a single, coherent context for supporting visualization and modeling activities.
Related funded project: Deformed Frogs at the Exploratorim
This group is specifically focused on adapting scientific visualization tools that are used to make sense of empirical data sets, which are often very large. As the pervasiveness of the Internet continues to spread, more and more scientific data is becoming available online. Several projects have begun to explore how to make this data, which is often actively used by practicing scientists, available to students as well. What tools do scientists use? What are the barriers to use of these tools in K-14?
In addition, this group focuses on the idea of a "scientist's workbench": a set of interoperable tools that can be used to analyze data in different ways. Designing such a set of tools poses a major challenge, in terms of learning environment design as well as software engineering.
Related funded projects: Exploring the Amazonian Rainforest, Digital Weather Station