VUE 2.0 will provide a range of new features including presentation tools, support for RDF, an improved interface for accessing digital repositories and integration with the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment. The goal is to define a new genre of educational software focused on the direct support of exploring, connecting and thinking with digital resources.
The Visual Understanding Environment project is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Please send inquiries concering the project to David Kahle (david.kahle@tufts.edu).
What is VUE?
As the availability of digital information continues to increase, there is a need for flexible tools that help faculty and students integrate electronic content into their teaching and learning. While numerous applications are available for locating digital information, few tools exist for selecting, organizing and making sense of the information available to us. The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an information management application that provides an interactive, concept mapping interface to digital resources accessed via the web, from FEDORA-based digital repositories, ftp servers or local file systems. Using a simple set of tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, faculty and students may map relationships between digital content to capture and communicate concepts and ideas. The resulting content maps can then be shared with others. VUE leverages the cognitive benefits of concept mapping as an interface and information visualization techniques to support the creation of rich resource-based, instructional or research-oriented presentations.
Who Would Use VUE?
VUE can be used by anyone interested in visually structuring digital content, whether in support of teaching difficult to understand concepts or more generally a tool for organizing personal digital resources. While VUE can be seen as a general information management utility with broad applications, this version of VUE was designed with education in mind. VUE provides a concept mapping interface to digital libraries which allow faculty and student to link and map relationships between educational materials. VUE also supports author-defined pathways through maps of digital content, the ability to filter map content based on user-defined metadata, and support for comparing two maps side-by-side. Below are a few examples of how certain audiences have used VUE in education.* Instructors & Course Preparation
Instructors use VUE to plan or map out course content and instructional activities relative to their educational goals. Concept maps help faculty visualize the course in its entirety as well as connections between subtopics. With VUE's rich support for digital content, these maps can be linked to related educational materials and made accessible to students online. VUE provides faculty with a highly flexible visual interface for constructing instructional maps by aggregating and organizing digital content contained with FEDORA-based digital library systems, web sites and local file systems.
- Learner & Knowledge Construction
Curricula that encourages and scaffolds student exploration and the construction of connections among ideas leads to improved information retention and learning transfer. VUE provides a valuable supporting technology to such instructional activities. Through visualization and the processes of construction and annotation, VUE maps help learners establish and explore connections between topics within a complex domain. This facilitates deep learning and assists learners in connecting new information to existing knowledge. - Learning & Knowledge Assessment
Concept maps make personal understanding visible and explicit - for teachers and students. VUE can be used to design activities where students demonstrate their understanding of the relationships among ideas and resources. VUE maps assist instructors in visualizing changes in student understandings over time.
How is VUE different from existing concept mapping software?
Concept maps have had a long a fruitful history in education for both teaching and learning. They provide visual representations of complex ideas or processes and the ways in which these elements are connected or interrelated. When concept maps and the ideas they represent are connected to digital resources, as in VUE, concept maps also become content maps. VUE was designed based upon the need for easy access to and organization of digital content, whether local or stored in persistent digital library systems. The data source and resource panels are designed to place digital files at your fingertips in support of content mapping. In addition to an emphasis on mapping digital content, VUE also allows map authors to create visual pathways through a content map and supports the assignment of author-defined metadata to map elements. These features make complex maps accessible to learners, by providing a guided tour of the content and by allowing users to search for, display and/or conceal map elements in support of customized presentations.
