Database Reference
In-Depth Information
2.1 General Information
The first part of the survey gives an overview of the courses offered at the dif-
ferent universities represented by the Dagstuhl participants and provides some
details about the courses themselves. Table 1 shows the responses obtained from
this part. A balance of European and North-American universities were repre-
sented by participants in the survey results. The majority of courses were focused
on the “core field” of information visualization (about 68%). Two courses were
about visualization/computer graphics in general, and the rest were about appli-
cation fields (e.g. geographic visualization) or broader topics, such as information
interfaces or visual communication. This scope reflects the broad and interdisci-
plinary nature of Information Visualization and provides some indications as to
why developing an agreed Information Visualization curriculum may be dicult.
Most of the courses (79%) had their own publicly accessible web page provid-
ing access to course related information. Nearly all the referenced courses were
given in 2006 and 2007. Since all the responding instructors are active researchers
in the field as well, we can assume that all these courses covered the current state
of the art in information visualization. Because the detailed curriculum for the
courses was not part of the survey, we do not have details about actual course
content. The web pages associated with each of the courses are a rich source of
information however and we used these to gather keywords associated with the
curricula of each. Figure 1 shows a tag cloud generated from these keywords that
gives a flavor of the variety and importance of different topics across the courses.
The dominant words reflect some of the tensions in Information Visualization
education, with a collective need to focus on data—its dimensionality and struc-
ture, techniques for layout and visual encoding and people and their responses
to these methods and the systems through which they are accessed. Perhaps
the tag cloud and the varied responses suggest a need for systematic research to
learn about the range of approaches that are used in teaching Information Vi-
sualization and related topics. The session discussion, summarized in Section 3,
led to more insight about this, but it was not a comprehensive examination.
Most courses were taught at the graduate level, with only two being un-
dergraduate courses. At the bottom of Table 1, descriptive statistics about the
results of questions Q1g-Q1i on course duration and size are provided. The av-
erage duration of a course and the number of hours of weekly meeting time are
relatively consistent across the group. Note that most class sizes are relatively
small, echoing the fact that Information Visualization is still a relatively new
and growing area. Here, the undergraduate course #16 seems to be an outlier
because of its large enrollment. However, this course is a compulsory course
on computer graphics and visualization, and the instructor plans to divide this
course into two parts in the future.
2.2 Study Materials and Teaching Aids
Textb o oks (Q2a) :
About 72% of all the instructors (13 in total) used one or
more textbooks in their courses. The most popular topics were those by Colin
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