Visualization education in the USA

Abstract

The use of advanced computer graphics techniques to help visualize large volumes of multivariate information has become increasingly important. Most of the research in this area has been in the area of scientific visualization, and visualization has become one of the most important tools of modern computational science. It should be noted that computational science has become the third supporting methodology for the physical and biological sciences, alongside the more traditional theoretical and laboratory science areas. It is receiving considerable emphasis from the National Science Foundation in the United States.

This development has raised the issue of providing visualization education for both computer science students and students in the physical and biological sciences. The computer graphics community has started to examine the question of incorporating visualization concepts and techniques into undergraduate and graduate computer science curricula. The author co-chaired, with Steve Cunningham, an Educators' Seminar on “Education for Visualization” at SIGGRAPH '90 and the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee has recently formed a subcommitte (currently consisting of the author, Steve Cunningham, and Norman Soong of Villanova University) to address these educational issues. Steve Cunningham has just been elected to the Board of Directors of ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) and intends to work to support the development of computational science studies in computer science programs.

There are many issues in visualization education. Students need to be familiar with a wide range of tools, because visualization environments typically include many networked hardware and software tools that support particular aspects of visualization. Equipment in a visualization center typically includes high-performance computing and specialized codes for numerical experiments, specialized rendering machines with accelerated graphics, individual workstations for scientists' viewing, and specialized devices for making video or film images for study and publication. Many commercial visualization tools, such as the Silicon Graphics, Wavefront and Alias software systems, are now available for different computer platforms. In addition, a substantial amount of public domain visualization software is available, such as the set of image tools from the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois and the Khoros system from the Vision Lab at the University of New Mexico. Finally, some visualization software is developed, especially for special projects.

Some of the educational questions to be considered are as follows:

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  Should all computer science students learn some visualization concepts?

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  What computational environment should be offered to visualization students?

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  Should visualization techniques be a part of an introductory computer graphics course, part of an advanced computer graphics course, or should there be a separate course in the area?

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  Just what visualization techniques should be taught?

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  What are the appropriate underlying principles?

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  What textbooks and other course materials are available or need to be developed?

This paper will report on the current status of education for visualization in the United States, attempt to answer some of the above questions, and make some preliminary recommendations for future curriculum development.