Viz.ch: An E-learning Course on Visual
Literacy for Communication, Engineering and Business
Funding:
Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Virtual Campus Program.
Project Leader: prof.
Martin
Eppler, University of Lugano
Period: 2 years: 1 January,
2006 - 31 December, 2007
Project
Web Site:
http://www.visual-literacy.org/
Motivation
This proposal focuses on a critical, but often neglected skill for
business, communication, and engineering students namely visual
literacy, or the ability to assess abstract visual representations of
information and knowledge, to evaluate their advantages and
disadvantages, to improve their shortcomings, to use them to create and
communicate knowledge, or to devise new ways of representing
insights.
Description
The faculties of Communication Sciences and Informatics of the
University of Lugano will collaborate with the University of St. Gallen
and the University of Applied Sciences North-Western Switzerland to
develop an online tutorial in English onvisualization principles and
methods and their applications. The didactic approach consists of
rooting visualization in its application contexts, giving students the
necessary critical attitude, principles, tools and feedback to develop
their own high-quality visualization formats for specific problems
(problem based learning). The students thus learn about the
commonalities of good visualization in diverse areas, but also explore
the specificities of visualization in their field of specialization
(through real-life case studies). They will not only learn by doing,
but in doing so contribute new didactic training material for their
peers to evaluate. Peer learning is thus an important didactic element
of this proposal. The tutorial consists of three building blocks: basic
modules, application modules, and exploration modules. The basic
modules motivate students for the topic and enable them to understand
visualization rules and conventions. The application modules show how
these principles can be used for specific communication, engineering,
or business problems. The exploration modules let students develop
their own solutions and assess each others’ approaches critically.
My
contribution
I was the creator of modules of the course
on Information Visualization. I also helped people with technical aspects of the project regarding the use of
online platform (Moodle)
<-- back