Information Visualization in the Educational Process: Current Trends

Abstract

The rapid development of computer visualization techniques as well as virtual and augmented reality has led to the possibility of perfect data visualization and the creation of a special virtual space for educating new generation. Simultaneously, the increase in the amount of data to be processed requires a proper selection and presentation of data for solving specific problems. Education sets such tasks as 1) improving the efficiency of presenting information and its assimilation by stu-dents, and 2) increasing the convenience and quality of the teachers’ work. The purpose of this study is to test an acceleration and improvement of the teacher’s response to students studying with more productive visualized learning material. Meanwhile, the created visualization system was based on minimizing the efforts and costs of its preparation and constant support. Only free cloud-based services and visualization tools were used. Students were given the opportunity to con-stantly, in real time control their learning process and create education markers with the help of perspicuous visual environment. To create a visualization system, already existing works on the implementation and verification of the system was used. The study was based on the results of applying this technology. A survey of 300 students from three universities in China, Russia and Kazakhstan was conducted. The control group consisted of 150 students from the same universi-ties who did not use visualization to master the same educational material. Ac-cording to the results of the study, students who used information visualization showed a sharp increase in the subjective assessment of the speed and quality of their learning (58.58% and 37.73%, respectively, of the total number of partici-pants gave a high rating, while in the control group – only12.25%). Further, the level of anxiety associated with an assimilation of new language material was significantly decreased (13.54% in the study group did not feel anxiety, while on-ly 7% – in the control group).