Using Treemaps to Visualize Threaded Discussion Forums on PDAs

This paper describes a new way of visualizing threaded discussion forums on compact displays. The technique uses squarified treemaps to render the threads in discussion forums as colored rectangles, thereby using 100% of the limited screen space. We conducted a preliminary user study, which compared the treemap version and a traditional text based tree interface. This showed that the contents of the discussion forum were easily grasped when using a treemap, even though there were in excess of one hundred threads. In particular our technique showed a significant improvement in time for finding the largest and most active threads. Overall, it was shown that the benefits derived from using treemaps on desktop computers are still valid for small screens

Information visualization for mobile devices: A novel approach based on the MagicEyeView

Visualization on mobile devices not only means accommodating to a small screen space, but also widely different aspect ratios. Improving on the MagicEyeView algorithm, this paper presents a visualization technique that is better suited to screens with skewed aspects ratios. The presented approach is a focus+context visualization effort which employs distortion of coordinate scales and a "fisheye" technique. The visualization algorithm is evaluated in the problem domain of business management and the presentation of "Key Performance Indicators"

Sistema de visualización para asistir la navegación dentro de un foro de discusión en línea

Hemos desarrollado una herramienta de visualización que permite a los usuarios de un foro de discusión navegar gráficamente a través del mismo. El proyecto incluye el diseño de una metáfora de visualización que destaca las características de los elementos del foro (categorías, sub-categorías, hilos y mensajes) y la implementación de la misma. También, se crearon filtros que permiten la interacción con el usuario y se incluyó un motor de búsqueda textual. El prototipo fue validado con datos reales tomados del foro de discusión perteneciente al proyecto open source “Processing”. / Abstract. We have developed a visualization tool that enables the users of a discussion forum to navigate graphically through it. The project includes the design of a visualization metaphor that highlights some characteristics of the elements in the forum such as categories, subcategories, threads, and the implementation thereof. Also some filters that allow interaction with the user were created, included a textual search engine. The prototype was tested with actual data taken from the discussion forum that belongs to the open source project of the Processing languageMaestrí

IMPROVING PEER LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN STEM COURSES VIA PATTERN BASED GRAPH VISUALIZATION

High quality education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) majors expects not only the acquisition of comprehensive domain knowledge, but also the mastery of skills to solve open-ended and even ill-defined problems in real world. Problem-based Learning (PBL) is usually adopted to achieve such goals by encouraging students to learn by solving real-life problems. However, successful PBL requires sustained and in-depth involvement of faculty members, hence making PBL not scalable. Even though discussion forums and Q&A systems can help address the scalability problem of faculty involvement on large class sizes, it introduces new problems. First, as knowledge bases grow in size, the sheer size of the accumulated knowledge makes it harder to locate the desired information. Second, existing knowledge discovery techniques do not provide effective facilities for the capture and reuse of solutions to recurring problems. To address these challenges, we developed MicroBrowser, an innovative and interactive Question & Answer (Q&A) system augmented with pattern-based expertise-sharing interfaces and 2D knowledge graph discussion visualization. MicroBrowser provides a set of pattern-based expertise-sharing interfaces to allow both learners and instructors to refine, reuse, and share knowledge. MicroBrowser also allows learners to browse and navigate important discussions based on topic similarity encoded by node proximity in a knowledge graph. Results of empirical evaluations of our proposed solution show that ask difficulty improves with MicroBrowser when compared with a state-of-the-art Q&A system for knowledge discovery and reuse tasks. In addition, success rate for knowledge discovery tasks using keywords was higher with MicroBrowser. Moreover, we show that, students found the pattern-based expertise-sharing interface easy to use and were able to contribute new knowledge in the form of new knowledge connections and even recommend new design patterns

Using Treemaps to Visualize Threaded Discussion Forums on PDAs

This paper describes a new way of visualizing threaded discussion forums on compact displays. The technique uses squarified treemaps to render the threads in discussion forums as colored rectangles, thereby using 100 % of the limited screen space. We conducted a preliminary user study, which compared the treemap version and a traditional text based tree interface. This showed that the contents of the discussion forum were easily grasped when using a treemap, even though there were in excess of one hundred threads. In particular our technique showed a significant improvement in time for finding the largest and most active threads. Overall, it was shown that the benefits derived from using treemaps on desktop computers are still valid for small screens