Work in progress - curriculum visualization

Abstract

CurricVis is a work-in-progress curriculum visualization application. The structure of a curriculum is modeled as a directed graph whose nodes represent courses and whose edges represent relationships between courses. Various graphical styles are used to encode details such as co-requisites and electives. Diagrams are automatically generated based on a curricular knowledge base. This approach has many benefits over manually-created visualizations: they require less maintenance and promote visual exploration of curriculum modifications. The CurricVis prototype has been used to generate visualizations of Computer Science curricula, including degree programs for majors and minors. The resulting visualizations have been valuable in advising current students as well as explaining the curriculum to prospective students. They have also been used to facilitate curriculum discussion in departmental committees. More user-friendly data entry and visualization generation interfaces are currently under development. Future work includes integration with Web-based course catalogs and student transcripts, path highlighting for computer-assisted advising, and the integration of more advanced information visualization techniques for large-scale curriculum visualization.