Construct-A-Vis: Exploring the Free-Form Visualization Processes of Children

What University Students Learn In Visualization Classes

As a step towards improving visualization literacy, this work investigates how students approach reading visualizations differently after taking a university-level visualization course. We asked students to verbally walk through their process of making sense of unfamiliar visualizations, and conducted a qualitative analysis of these walkthroughs. Our qualitative analysis found that after taking a visualization course, students engaged with visualizations in more sophisticated ways: they were more likely to exhibit design empathy by thinking critically about the tradeoffs behind why a chart was designed in a particular way, and were better able to deconstruct a chart to make sense of it. We also gave students a quantitative assessment of visualization literacy and found no evidence of scores improving after the class, likely because the test we used focused on a different set of skills than those emphasized in visualization classes. While current measurement instruments for visualization literacy are useful, we propose developing standardized assessments for additional aspects of visualization literacy, such as deconstruction and design empathy. We also suggest that these additional aspects could be incorporated more explicitly in visualization courses. All supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/w5pum/.

Cultivating Visualization Literacy for Children Through Curiosity and Play

Fostering data visualization literacy (DVL) as part of childhood education could lead to a more data literate society. However, most work in DVL for children relies on a more formal educational context (i.e., a teacher-led approach) that limits children's engagement with data to classroom-based environments and, consequently, children's ability to ask questions about and explore data on topics they find personally meaningful. We explore how a curiosity-driven, child-led approach can provide more agency to children when they are authoring data visualizations. This paper explores how informal learning with crafting physicalizations through play and curiosity may foster increased literacy and engagement with data. Employing a constructionist approach, we designed a do-it-yourself toolkit made out of everyday materials (e.g., paper, cardboard, mirrors) that enables children to create, customize, and personalize three different interactive visualizations (bar, line, pie). We used the toolkit as a design probe in a series of in-person workshops with 5 children (6 to 11-year-olds) and interviews with 5 educators. Our observations reveal that the toolkit helped children creatively engage and interact with visualizations. Children with prior knowledge of data visualization reported the toolkit serving as more of an authoring tool that they envision using in their daily lives, while children with little to no experience found the toolkit as an engaging introduction to data visualization. Our study demonstrates the potential of using the constructionist approach to cultivate children's DVL through curiosity and play.

Research on the Correlation between Multisource Big Data Virtual Assisted Preschool Education and the Development of Children’s Innovative Ability

Objective. Innovation ability is an important part of children’s core literacy and the core goal of science curriculum. As one of the important contents of scientific literacy, innovation ability is the key ability of young children to make informed decisions when facing scientific problems in social and personal life. In order to adapt to the future life, it is very important for children to have the ability to innovate. This research will provide a reference for the cultivation of children’s innovative ability. Method. In the process of database design, certain design principles need to be followed. In this paper, the system and user experience are greatly optimized by reasonably constructing table structure, allocating storage space, and establishing indexes. In this system, the MySQL database is used to store system data, such as user registration information, subscription information, and system-provided services, and the data uploaded by users that needs to be processed is stored in Hive. Although the GFP algorithm can solve the problem of load balancing, when the largest conditional pattern base of a frequent item is projected to other nodes, a large amount of data transmission will occur, resulting in increased communication between nodes. In order to solve this problem, the FP-growth parallel algorithm based on traffic optimization gives priority to assigning each frequent item to the node that needs the least traffic when grouping it. Results/Discussion. Experiments show that the TFP algorithm not only satisfies the load balance of nodes but also ensures a small amount of communication between nodes, which is more efficient than the traditional FP-growth parallel algorithm. The survey results of the influencing factors of children’s innovation ability match the theoretical hypothesis, and different influencing factors have different effects on each dimension of children’s innovation ability. Through the basic fit index of the model, the evaluation of the external quality of the model and the test of the internal quality of the model, it is shown that the survey results of the influencing factors of children’s innovation ability match the theoretical hypothesis. The three influencing factors of family participation and investment, teacher teaching, and peer collaboration and communication have a positive role in promoting children’s innovation ability.

Designing Narrative-Focused Role-Playing Games for Visualization Literacy in Young Children

Building on game design and education research, this paper introduces narrative-focused role-playing games as a way to promote visualization literacy in young children. Visualization literacy skills are vital in understanding the world around us and constructing meaningful visualizations, yet, how to better develop these skills at an early age remains largely overlooked and understudied. Only recently has the visualization community started to fill this gap, resulting in preliminary studies and development of educational tools for use in early education. We add to these efforts through the exploration of gamification to support learning, and identify an opportunity to apply role-playing game-based designs by leveraging the presence of narratives in data-related problems involving visualizations. We study the effects of including narrative elements on learning through a technology probe, grounded in a set of design considerations stemming from visualization, game design and education science. We create two versions of a game - one with narrative elements and one without - and evaluate our instances on 33 child participants between 11- to 13-years old using a between-subjects study design. Despite participants requiring double the amount of time to complete their game due to additional narrative elements, the inclusion of such elements were found to improve engagement without sacrificing learning; our results indicate no significant differences in development of graph-reading skills, but significant differences in engagement and overall enjoyment of the game. We report observations and qualitative feedback collected, and note areas for improvement and room for future work.