Interactive learning system "VisMis" for scientific visualization course

Abstract

Now visualization courses have been taught at universities around the world. Keeping students motivated and actively engaged in this course can be a challenging task. In this paper we introduce our developed interactive learning system called VisMis for postgraduate scientific visualization course at Beijing Normal University. We develop it following the Great Didactic from Comenius and the theory of constructivism on constructing the visual and interactive learning environment to support and challenge the student's learning. We give a report on our proprietary system including its educational objective, volume visualization module, multi-modal interaction module, and CUDA implementation etc. By way of educational practices, we conclude that the VisMis not only aids the student to better understand the core algorithms of the scientific visualization course such as volume rendering, volume illustration and volume interaction so on, but also as a good experiment platform helps them develop the visual programing skills based on its framework.