EduVis: visualizing educational information

Abstract

A successful analysis of educational processes may help enhance success. Data Mining techniques, despite allowing analysis of such data, result in an extensive set of symbolic patterns that are difficult to understand. Visualization may overcome this limitation due to its potential to display large quantities of data while alleviating cognitive load. We developed a visualization that allows the analysis of patterns obtained by using educational data mining techniques to gather patterns of interdependences among courses in a university program. We created EduVis, a coordinated visualization which takes advantage of two different, complementary, tools: a multi-layered visualization and a multi-matrix representation of courses and corresponding relationships. Preliminary user tests have shown that EduVis makes important patterns immediately perceivable, suggesting that a small number of adjustments will realize its full potential for visualizing educational information.