User Effects of Interactive Visualization in Higher Education

Christian Spletter is a research associate at the Institute for Media and Communications Management and a PhD candidate in the Organization Studies and Cultural Theory Doctoral Program of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of St. Gallen. He studied social and communication sciences and psychology.

University stakeholders act as knowledge workers and engage more than ever with finding the right (organizational) strategy for effective learning. Knowledge visualization is a relevant domain to build upon. It refers to the use of visual representations to organize, align and improve (innovative) teaching and learning. It facilitates cognitive processing and includes social and emotional benefits.

This dissertation project builds a foundation for knowledge visualization in higher education contexts: A literature review will first look at challenging and successful aspects in its use along an educational value chain. This comprehensive overview will help practitioners and researchers to use visualizations for effective teaching and learning on all levels.

Due to stackability as upcoming learning strategy, further research activities will focus on course selection as a crucial task in lifelong learning. Considering visualizing learning offers as a spearhead for higher education research, they relate interactive visualization to the choice overload debate (paradox of choice), but with different accentuation in purpose and methodology:

An experimental study will focus on psychological user effects of interactive visualization to support course selection. An additional case study will gather relevant insights from educational innovators to identify risks and benefits in the implementation of interactive course representations to decrease choice overload and related outcomes.