LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcomes in three categories (must know, should know, nice to know):
Must know: Basics about how to visualize information in interactive and explorative ways.
For this the students will learn how to support information usability for creating visualizations with web technologies. Course is motivated by showing real examples of dealing with spatial,temporal and thematic information, and solutions to them. Those are required to be well understood as a result of the course.
Should Know: Handling spatial, temporal and thematic data in creative ways. Understanding how to query only the part of data that is useful in a given aggregation, visualization or browsing function is an example of this. Included are different explorative visualization strategies, and understanding of space and time as major integrators for data. As part of this, students should know the requirements for data, and data descriptions for various visualization and application scenarios.
Nice to know: The works of other students in more detail, i.e. topics, research problems, provided methods and solutions presented in them are material in the course, and belong to this category. Students are introduced to other topics via discussion sessions, presentations, and via the peer review process where students are required to give feedback to other works.
In summary students will learn theory, techniques, presentation and organizational skills for creating explorative information visualizations.
Credits: 5
Schedule: 05.09.2024 - 15.12.2024
Teacher in charge (valid for whole curriculum period):
Teacher in charge (applies in this implementation): Tomi Kauppinen
Contact information for the course (applies in this implementation):
CEFR level (valid for whole curriculum period):
Language of instruction and studies (applies in this implementation):
Teaching language: English. Languages of study attainment: English
CONTENT, ASSESSMENT AND WORKLOAD
Content
valid for whole curriculum period:
In this course we study approaches for explorative information visualization. The idea is to support information usability by enabling to explore interesting patterns from datasets in visual ways. Explorative information visualization makes a joint use of efficient metaphors like hierarchies, graphs, charts, lists, maps, and timelines. The course supports students to understand the role of hybrid methods from spatial data mining to network analytics, and from linked data to time-series handling for supporting information visualization. Our focus is on the process-thinking, thus starting from sparse datasets and to understand the tasks for iteratively making sense of data.
In the course we will have a special emphasis on visualizing spatial and temporal information jointly with thematic information. The seminar builds on the idea of flipped classroom and blended learning ideas, and thus combines online learning materials with intensive face to face sessions. Online materials consist of lectures for preparing, handling and analyzing data, integrating different datasets, and for approaches to create visual demonstrations of data with maps, timelines and thematic overviews. The course consists of sessions each having a brief lecture, discussions, group works and presentations. The theoretical part of the course is deepened via our joint sessions and by individual seminar reports on selected topics.
For the course students choose their topics to visualize information about among Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by UN. The final visualizations thus either support us all to understand one or more of the SDGs or even help us to act achieving them.
Assessment Methods and Criteria
valid for whole curriculum period:
Grading of the seminar is as follows: 1/3 for the seminar work, 1/3 for the opponent work, 1/3 for the active participation and presentation of the seminar work. As part of the active participation grade, students are required to prepare a one page abstract of the assigned readings / lectures in relation to her own topic.
Workload
valid for whole curriculum period:
Students are invited to work independently between the course sessions. The independent work consists of reading relevant articles, reflecting face to face sessions, provided readings and examples via one pagers, preparing a draft report for peer review, conducting peer review of draft reports by other students, preparing the final information visualization and report, and submitting all of these in a timely manner.
DETAILS
Study Material
valid for whole curriculum period:
Online videos, tutorials and exercises, example visualizations, workshop-style face to face sessions, podcasts, articles.
Substitutes for Courses
valid for whole curriculum period:
Prerequisites
valid for whole curriculum period:
SDG: Sustainable Development Goals
1 No Poverty
2 Zero Hunger
3 Good Health and Well-being
4 Quality Education
5 Gender Equality
6 Clean Water and Sanitation
7 Affordable and Clean Energy
8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10 Reduced Inequality
11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
12 Responsible Production and Consumption
13 Climate Action
14 Life Below Water
15 Life on Land
16 Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
17 Partnerships for the Goals
FURTHER INFORMATION
Further Information
valid for whole curriculum period:
Teaching Language: English
Teaching Period: 2024-2025 Autumn I - II
2025-2026 Autumn I - II