The role of visualization in learning

Introduction 🌊

     Data visualization is becoming increasingly common in teaching, learning and evaluation. With the rise of tools available for educators to present data visualization, there's an opportunity to go through pedagogies that support the use of data visualization in classrooms.

    Data visualization can be rooted in constructivism as this step requires reflecting on the learners experience of the data when it is presented. Data could have been just presented to the user as is, but would lose the message and insight that the data would have imparted on the learner. Below are the types of constructivism that we can determine is used in education for data visualization. 

In this sense, data visualization is considered an active-based pedagogy by:

1. Data visualization promotes a way for learners to be introduced to complex data

2. Rather than focusing on what is presented in the data, the storytelling of visualization allows learner to take in the information through different sensory means

3. Data visualization opens up inquiry to active learning approaches such as 1:1 teaching, interactivity through online content, brain based learning 

4. Data visualization  allows learners to see data applied in real world settings

Data visualization imparts the emotional or relational aspect  to be used with storytelling

1) Data can provide an emotional response and visualization allows a way to change the way that data can be perceived

2) When used in conjunction with storytelling can be effective as an information-transmission vehicle

2) Visualization that elicit an emotional response makes the data more relatable for an audience which then increases retention and apprehension  

3) Examples of ways to iilicit emotion for visualization is using specific colours, familiar characters, lines and shapes 

4) Animations and the use of AI to come up with new shapes, animations and colour combinations are finding new ways to illicit complex emotions through data visualization