Describes a user interface that provides global visualizations of large document sets to help users formulate the query that corresponds to their information needs. Highlights include concept hierarchies that users can browse to specify and refine information needs; knowledge discovery in databases and texts; and multidimensional modeling.…

Describes how the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) helped VisMod evolve from a collection of local and distinct research and development efforts into a solid field of education. (Author/YDS)

Studied the extent to which collaborative knowledge construction can be fostered by providing students with visualization tools as structural support. Results for 32 college students working in dyads show that providing a content-specific visualization tool improves both the process and the outcome of the cooperative effort. (SLD)

Interviewed students about their experiences preparing for final university examinations. Analyzed processes of learning used during review, and in particular, the ways in which understanding and memorizing were described. Found that one recurring aspect of the review process involved the creation of "knowledge objects"--tightly structured,…

Proposes a developmental model involving four response levels concerning how students arrange pictures to represent data in a pictograph, how they interpret these pictographs, and how they make predictions based on these pictographs. The model is exemplified by responses from three related interview-based studies. Discusses educational…

Graphic representations help learners comprehend, summarize, and synthesize complex ideas in ways that often surpass verbal statements. This article provides visual illustrations and presents a five-step process for training students to use graphic outlining techniques. Includes 17 references. (MLH)

An experimental group of 20 gifted adolescents received 3 weeks of computer-assisted design (CAD) instruction. Comparison of their scores on Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board test with those of 20 gifted controls showed CAD did not improve spatial visualization ability. Possible causes were differential computer experience, lack of random…

Examines types of graphical representation as to their suitability for knowledge acquisition in primary grades. Uses the concept of mental models to clarify the relationship between external presentation and internal representation of knowledge. Finds that students who learned with highly elaborated and highly structured pictures displayed the…

Demonstrates how research-based knowledge of students' incompatible solutions to various representations of the same problem could be used to raise their awareness of inconsistencies in their reasoning. Reports that students' decisions as to whether two given infinite sets have the same number of elements depend on the specific representation of…

Reports the results of an informal study of very young children's reactions to some visual displays of data. (Author/ASK)

Describes three activities of imaging, including constructing an image, representation-presenting the image, and transforming the image. Discusses a link between imaging and number sense, teaching students to image, and assessing imaging. Contains 25 references. (ASK)

Discussion of information-retrieval test collections focuses on a study of TREC documents that used scaling and visualization of documents using a maximum-likelihood estimation method to examine the relevance of documents retrieved. Discusses clustering, similarity measures, isomorphism, and semantic relevance. (LRW)

Presents a visualization tool for information retrieval that can display two different similarity measures, angle and distance, in the same space. Discusses the visual display of information-retrieval evaluation models and develops a new retrieval means based on the visual retrieval tool, the controlling bar. (Author/LRW)

Discusses information visualization techniques and introduces a visual term discrimination value analysis method using a document density space within a distance-angle-based visual information retrieval environment. Explains that applications of these methods facilitate more effective assignment of term weights to index terms within documents and…

This study with 16 adolescents with mental retardation compared free-recall rates under two encoding conditions: (1) fade-in, initially presenting pictures out of focus then slowly fading them into focus; and (2) fade-out, slowly blurring originally clear pictures. Results indicated that free-recall rates were greater for the fade-in items for…