Visualized Statistics and Students’ Reasoning Processes in A Post Truth Era

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface (with a dynalinked view of an interactive map together with interactive graphs) and students interact to solve tasks in secondary schools’ social-science classrooms. Teachers are probably better able to support their students if they know more about the translations and the patterns that emerge when students try to engage in interactive graph reading. We have distinguished three patterns that emerge in the interactions. These patterns, decoding, manoeuvring and incorporation of prior knowledge, is supportive in elucidating the students’ visual and analytical reasoning processes. Insights about those reasoning processes is important since earlier research has highlighted the centrality of considering the problems of the complexity of interactive graph reading and thus dealing with issues concerning students’ abilities to read and interpret such graphs, when presented as part of interactive information visualization technology

Visualized Statistics and Students’ Reasoning Processes in A Post Truth Era

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface (with a dynalinked view of an interactive map together with interactive graphs) and students interact to solve tasks in secondary schools’ social-science classrooms. Teachers are probably better able to support their students if they know more about the translations and the patterns that emerge when students try to engage in interactive graph reading. We have distinguished three patterns that emerge in the interactions. These patterns, decoding, manoeuvring and incorporation of prior knowledge, is supportive in elucidating the students’ visual and analytical reasoning processes. Insights about those reasoning processes is important since earlier research has highlighted the centrality of considering the problems of the complexity of interactive graph reading and thus dealing with issues concerning students’ abilities to read and interpret such graphs, when presented as part of interactive information visualization technology

Students multimodal knowledge sharing in school : Spatial repertoires and semiotic assemblages

In a world flooded with data, students in school need adequate tools as Visual Analytics (VA), that easily process mass data, give support in drawing advanced conclusions and help to make informed predictions in relation to societal circumstances. Methods for how the students insights may be reformulated and presented in appropriate modes are required as well. Therefore, the aim in this study is to analyse elementary school students practices of communicating visual discoveries, their insights, as the final stage in the knowledge-building process with an VA-application for interactive data visualization. A design-based intervention study is conducted in one social science classroom to explore modes for students presentation of insights, constructed from the interactive data visualizations. Video captures are used to document 30 students multifaceted presentations. The analyses are based on concepts from Pennycook (2018) and Deleuze and Guattari (1987). To account for how different modes interact, when students present their findings, one significant empirical sequence is described in detail. The emerging communicative dimensions (visual-, bodily- and verbal-) are embedded within broad spatial repertoires distributing flexible semiotic assemblages. These assemblages provide an incentive for the possibilities of teachers assessments of their students knowledge outcomes.Funding Agencies|Linkoping University</p

The Contents and Organization fo Cross Boundary Learning : Main Findings

Boundary crossing in undergraduate and graduate learning environments is still a relatively unstudied phenomenon, at least in comparison with the attention given to studies of interdisciplinary research. The research reported here focuses on learning environments in the context of Swedish higher education and is based on interviews and fieldwork at two interdisciplinary programs at two universities. The main findings are summarized in twelve themes which represent different ways of understanding the complexity of boundary crossing in pedagogical practice. We identify the shifting conjunctures of higher education in which key notions such as boundary crossing can demonstrate a strong attraction as well as its opposites in the form of strong rejection

The Contents and Organization fo Cross Boundary Learning : Main Findings

Boundary crossing in undergraduate and graduate learning environments is still a relatively unstudied phenomenon, at least in comparison with the attention given to studies of interdisciplinary research. The research reported here focuses on learning environments in the context of Swedish higher education and is based on interviews and fieldwork at two interdisciplinary programs at two universities. The main findings are summarized in twelve themes which represent different ways of understanding the complexity of boundary crossing in pedagogical practice. We identify the shifting conjunctures of higher education in which key notions such as boundary crossing can demonstrate a strong attraction as well as its opposites in the form of strong rejection

Students' Insights from Interactive Visualizations Arranged Multimodally in Knowledge Visualizations

In this study, a visual analytics application is put into practice in Swedish secondary school social science classrooms. The application offers support to analyse vast amounts of data through interactive data visualizations. Previous studies have demonstrated that the visual interactive interface challenges the traditional practice in school, where students usually demonstrate their knowledge by means of written texts. Thus, this study examines what happens if students work with more malleable, adaptable, or fluid modes when attempting to express their conclusions from work with interactive data visualizations. It aims to detect patterns in how knowledge visualizations are produced and arranged multimodally. Inspired by design-based research, the study conducted two classroom interventions followed by video captures. It employed a socio-material semiotic approach, which enables the study of interactions between both social and material actors. Three patterns emerged when students’ insights were translated into knowledge visualizations – exploring, gathering, and inserting. It became obvious how different actors taking part of such a digital multimodal writing activity affect and change every actor/everyone/everything, which in turn transfers, relocalizes, reformulates, and re-presents the communicated message. Knowing how knowledge visualizations are produced might strengthen students’ visual abilities when transforming insights multimodally

The construction of interactive and multimodal reading in school—a performative, collaborative and dynamic reading

This study aims to demonstrate how interactions between a Visual Analytics (VA) application and students shape an interactive and multimodal reading practice. VA is a technology offering support with analysing vast amounts of data through visualisations. Such information-rich interactive interfaces provide possibilities for students to gain insights, find correlations, and draw conclusions, but they also generate complexities concerning how to ‘read’ multimodal information on a screen. Inspired by Design-Based Research, interventions were designed and conducted in five social science secondary classrooms. The interactions between the VA application Statistics eXplorer and the students were video captured. A socio-material semiotic approach guides the analyses of how interactions between all actors (the interactive visualisations, the written text, the teachers, students, etc.) produce a reading network. The results show a reading characterised by being performative, collaborative, and dynamic. A combination of visuals and text supports the reading. However, visuals such as colour, highlighting and movement dominantly attract students’ attention, while written text often becomes subordinate and sometimes even ‘invisible’. Hence, this paper argues that it is vital for teachers to didactically support students’ visual reading skills

Still w(AI)ting for the automation of teaching: An exploration of machine learning in Swedish primary education using Actor-Network Theory

Machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are predicted to play a transformative role in primary education, where these technologies for automation and personalization are now being introduced to classroom instruction. This article explores the rationales and practices by which machine learning and AI are emerging in schools. We report on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, where a machine learning teaching aid in mathematics, the AI Engine, was tried out by 22 teachers and more than 250 primary education students. By adopting an Actor-Network Theory approach, the analysis focuses on the interactions within the network of heterogeneous actors bound by the AI Engine as an obligatory passage point. The findings show how the actions and accounts emerging within the complex ecosystem of human actors compensate for the unexpected and undesirable algorithmic decisions of the AI Engine. We discuss expectations about AI in education, contradictions in how the AI Engine worked and uncertainties about how machine learning algorithms ‘learn’ and predict. These factors contribute to our understanding of the potential of automation and personalisation—a process that requires continued re-negotiations. The findings are presented in the form of a fictional play in two acts, an ethnodrama. The ethnodrama highlights controversies in the use of AI in education, such as the lack of transparency in algorithmic decision-making—and how this can play out in real-life learning contexts. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of AI in primary education