Drs. Hutchings and Squire published "VisMap: Exploratory Visualization Support for Introductory Data Science and Visualization" in the proceedings of The ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Hutchings presented the work at the conference on March 3, 2016, in Memphis.
The ongoing research project to create and evaluate VisMap, a software support tool for the Elon Computing Sciences department’s Introduction to Data Science and Visualization is open to all educators and students at https://www.hutchmap.com
In the published paper, Hutchings and Squire discuss the development of the innovative data science course with a visualization emphasis and highlight shortcomings of visualization tools for students new to data visualization. They describe their design and development VisMap, a Web-based tool students can use to critically evaluate visualization type choices and attributes of specific visualization selections. The authors illustrate how VisMap can assist students in analysis areas such as correlation, composition, geosptial (in which numerical data is overlaid on a geographical map or other spatial orientations).
The VisMap project has been supported by Elon grant internal grant programs such as Summer Fellowship.