End-User Needs of Fragmented Databases in Higher Education Data Analysis and Decision Making

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)In higher education, a wealth of data is available to advisors, recruiters, marketers, and program directors. However, data sources can be accessed in a variety of ways and often do not seem to represent the same data set, presenting users with the confounding notion that data sources are in conflict with one another. As users are identifying new ways of accessing and analyzing this data, they are modifying existing work practices and sometimes creating their own databases. To understand how users are navigating these databases, the researchers employed a mixed methods research design including a survey and interview to understand the needs to end users who are accessing these seemingly fragmented databases. The study resulted in a three overarching categories – access, understandability, and use – that affect work practices for end users. The researchers used these themes to develop a set of broadly applicable design recommendations as well as six sets of sketches for implementation – development of a data gateway, training, collaboration, tracking, definitions and roadblocks, and time management

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Department of Computer Science and EngineeringMany visualization systems have provided multiple coordinated views (MCVs) with a belief that using MCVs brings benefits during visual analysis. However, if a tool requires tedious or repeated interactions to create one view, users may feel difficulty in utilizing the MCV tools due to perceived expensive interaction costs. To reduce such interaction costs, a number of visual tools have started providing a method, called visualization duplication to allow users to copy an existing visualization with one click. In spite of the importance of such easy view creation method, very little empirical work exists on measuring impacts of the method. In this work, we aim to investigate the impacts of visualization duplication on visual analysis strategies, interaction behaviors, and analysis performance. To achieve the goals, we designed a prototype visual tool, equipped with the easy view creation method and conducted a human-subjects study. In the experiment, 44 participants completed five analytic tasks using a visualization system. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, we discovered that visualization duplication is related to the number of views and generated insights and accuracy of visual analysis. The results also revealed visualization duplication effects on deciding analytical strategies and interaction patterns.clos

THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN VISUALIZATION

The popular notion that emotion and reason are incompatible is no longer defensi- ble. Recent research in psychology and cognitive science has established emotion as a key element in numerous aspects of perception and cognition, including attention, memory, decision-making, risk perception, and creativity. This dissertation centers around the observation that emotion influences many aspects of perception and cog- nition that are crucial for effective visualization. First, I demonstrate that emotion influences accuracy in fundamental visualiza- tion tasks by combining a classic graphical perception experiment (from Cleveland and McGill) with emotion induction procedures from psychology (chapter 3). Next, I expand on the experiments in the first chapter to explore additional techniques for studying emotion and visualization, resulting in an experiment that shows that performance differences between primed individuals persist even as task difficulty in- creases (chapter 4). In a separate experiment, I show how certain emotional states (i.e. frustration and engagement) can be inferred from visualization interaction logs using machine learning (chapter 5). I then discuss a model for individual cognitive dif- ferences in visualization, which situates emotion into existing individual differences research in visualization (chapter 6). Finally, I propose an preliminary model for emotion in visualization (chapter 7)

GUIComp: A GUI Design Assistant with Real-Time, Multi-Faceted Feedback

Department of Computer Science and EngineeringMaintaining the high quality of mobile Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) is essential to make a mobile application more useful for its users. For this reason, there are many mobile GUI prototyping tools. However, users may face challenges while designing graphic user interfaces, due to a lack of relevant skills, experience, and guidance. In particular, the users can often be overwhelmed in the first prototyping stage and it is hard to recognize mistakes for users in advance. These challenges can be significantly alleviated by supporting immediately feedback (e.g., recommendation and evaluation) while designing GUI. Due to absence of feedback, users still rely on their own ideas and intuition with mobile GUI prototyping tool that requires timeconsuming and error-prone design procedures. In this thesis, we aim at investigating what causes users to become frustrated during the design process, and how to resolve the issues. To achieve this goal, first, we conducted semistructured interviews with 16 users, to understand their challenges with an existing tool, and to identify features that can facilitate the design process. Second, based on the interview results, we built a GUI prototyping tool, called GUIComp that provides real-time multi-faceted feedback on a user???s current design, such as visual complexity scores, viewer???s attention heatmap, and recommended example designs. Third, we performed a between-user experiment, where 30 participants were asked to create mobile GUIs with either GUIComp or an existing design tool. Fourth, we asked 26 online workers to assess the designs produced in the experiment. The results indicate that GUIComp users produced more acceptable designs than the non-GUIComp users and designing with GUIComp results in a more enjoyable, satisfactory, and affordable user experience during the design process than that with the existing tool. We discuss how to design for multi-facted feedback while designing GUI to effectively interact human and AI and limitations of the study. The fundamental idea of this thesis is to go beyond traditional GUI prototyping to create more acceptable designs to general users using real-time multi-faceted feedback. The resulting systems establish a research framework where real-time multi-faceted feedback can alleviate the challenges while designing GUIsclos

Beyond the Dataset: Understanding Sociotechnical Aspects of the Knowledge Discovery Process Among Modern Data Professionals

Data professionals are among the most sought-out professionals in today’s industry. Although the skillsets and training can vary among these professionals, there is some consensus that a combination of technical and analytical skills is necessary. In fact, a growing number of dedicated undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs are now offering such core skills to train modern data professionals. Despite the rapid growth of the data profession, we have few insights into what it is like to be a data professional on-the-job beyond having specific technical and analytical skills. We used the Knowledge Discovery Process (KDP) as a framework to understand the sociotechnical and collaborative challenges that data professionals face. We carried out 20 semi-structured interviews with data professionals across seven different domains. Our results indicate that KDP in practice is highly social, collaborative, and dependent on domain knowledge. To address the sociotechnical gap, the need for a translator within the KDP has emerged. The main contribution of this thesis is in providing empirical insights into the work of data professionals, highlighting the sociotechnical challenges that they face on the job. Also, we propose a new analytic approach to combine thematic analysis and cognitive work analysis (CWA) on the same dataset. Implications of this research will improve the productivity of data professionals and will have implications for designing future tools and training materials for the next generation of data professionals

CHALLENGING PRESERVICE TEACHER BELIEFS ABOUT THE PAST: THE INFLUENCE OF A COURSE DESIGNED TO SHIFT WAYS OF KNOWING ABOUT HISTORY TEACHING AND LEARNING

"School history" has long since been characterized by teacher-centered lectures and student passivity, which deviates substantially from the inquiry-based and rigorous methodology historians use to actively reconstruct the past. While recent efforts have been made to move toward a more investigative approach in classrooms, little if any progress has been made beyond the superficial reading of primary source documents. When trying to understand why the disconnect between disciplinary approaches to history and school history continues, researchers have speculated that the knowledge bases, from which prospective teachers develop beliefs about the meaning and processes of history, are foundationally weak. This study examines the influence of a college course designed to specifically address the teacher knowledge problem in history. Participant beliefs were targeted and intentionally challenged to elicit shifts toward more criterialist ways of knowing. It contributes to the literature on the teaching and learning of historical thinking as well as epistemic beliefs in history. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from participants over the course of one college semester through questionnaires, interviews, and coursework artifacts. Analysis was completed on two subscales: beliefs about history and beliefs about history teaching and learning. Consistent with some previous studies, this research found that once surfaced, participant beliefs did begin to shift toward a more expert way of knowing following explicit instruction and practice with authentic disciplinary tasks. While beliefs about the knower, what can be known, and the procedural strategies necessary to create knowledge shifted at varying levels of consistency and stability, the shifts appeared to have an associative relationship often moving in concert rather than independently. Additionally, results indicate that participants whose initial beliefs were more stable made greater shifts toward criterialism suggesting that those who were able to spend less time understanding new ideas were able to spend more time thinking about how to take those ideas and put them into practice. Implications of this research raise questions about what teacher educators need to know in order to expertly prepare preservice history educators along with considerations for the content and instruction of teacher education programs

The Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Experiential Training for Novice Therapists in Creative Collaborative Language

Novice solution-focused brief therapists often have difficulty delivering scaling questions within the languaging of their clients. To help beginning Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) trainees, this researcher has created the metaphorically enhanced scaling question (MESQ) training program. By incorporating a meaning making system such as the metaphor, the scaling question becomes expressive and symbolic to the client and his or her own story. The MESQ objective is to assist novice therapists in facilitating the SFBT scaling question creatively through the use of metaphor. A metaphor is a created meaning isomorphic to its original meaning or experience. The metaphor will be co-constructed through collaboration between client and therapist. The MESQ program encompasses three key elements of SFBT: listening, selecting, and building into three tangible activities designed for novice therapists to learn, articulate, and demonstrate their comprehension of the modified scaling technique (Bavelas, De Jong, Franklin, Froerer, Gingerich, Kim, Korman, Langer, Lee, McCullum, Jordan, & Trepper, 2013) This research is qualitative in nature, due to the examined experiences of the MESQ training program participants. Action research has been chosen to emphasize the learning aspect, and assist in training development. The MESQ training program will be evaluated based on Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluating training programs: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. (Kirkpatrick, 1996). The focus of this research project will be to refine and develop the MESQ training program through analytic evaluation