Preparing undergraduates for visual analytics
Ronald A Rensink
University of British Columbia
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 35 (2),
March/April. pp. 16-20. [pdf]
Visual
analytics (VA) combines the strengths of human and machine intelligence to
enable the discovery of interesting patterns in challenging datasets.
Historically, most attention has been given to developing the machine
component. But it is also essential to develop the abilities of the analysts
themselves, especially at the beginning of their careers. For the past several
years, the University of British Columbia (UBC)--with the support of
Boeing--has experimented with various ways of preparing undergraduate students
for VA. The result of this experimentation is a third-year undergraduate course
titled Cognitive Systems 303 (COGS 303) that focuses on "VA
unplugged"--that is, on developing investigative abilities prior to
training on the VA systems themselves.