INSPIRE: Studying and Promoting Quantitative and Spatial Reasoning with Complex Visual Data Across School, Museum, and Web-Media Contexts

该INSPIRE奖部分由本科教育部的STEM课程改革本科教育和教育和人力资源局学习研究部的发现研究K12计划资助;社会和行为科学局行为和认知科学部的地理和空间科学计划;以及计算机信息科学工程局信息和智能系统司的网络学习计划&&。 这是一个研究计划，以促进和学习有效的战略和思维习惯，了解复杂的地理空间数据，使用交互式可视化工具，并生成和测试设计策略，这些工具在三个方面：在线数据访问网站，互动博物馆展览，社会科学教室。这三个研究中心将利用地理信息系统（GIS）可视化工具，让学习者访问地理空间参考的历史美国。S.人口普查数据，用于检查人口在空间和时间上的变化。这些复杂的数据工具越来越多地用于不同的学科和日常生活的多个方面。 然而，学习者如何与他们互动仍然知之甚少。这三个研究中心将战略性地采用多种协调的研究方法，包括设计实验、机器学习分析、多模态交互分析和假设的交叉理论生成。这些实证研究的结果，协调在三个方面，将用于迭代生成和评估的设计策略，以促进有效的推理与复杂的数据，为学习者在这些学习环境中的每一个。 该项目还将建立跨学习环境的复杂地理空间数据的表达流畅性的连贯性，跨学科的理解。智力优势：该研究计划的优点源于其基本的跨学科性，结合了社会学，计算机科学，学习科学和GIS设计和大规模实施的研究方法，概念和设计专业知识，以解决人们如何使用社会科学数据学习的紧迫问题。由于拟议中的研究并不完全适合任何单一的学科，它是一个理想的匹配的目标，激励计划。该项目的概念和方法的多样性有助于其潜在的变革性质，作为跨学科合作的模式，改变现状的方法来研究数据可视化和学习环境的设计。 作为多个研究社区的积极成员和教育从业者工作的定期贡献者，合作研究者处于独特的位置，可以有效地将实证研究结果转化为跨多个社区的无障碍设计和专业发展机会。由于社会探索者目前实现的特殊传播规模，拟议项目有可能产生重大影响项目和相关设施在纽约科学博物馆，以及观众的多样性为基础的研究设计在这三个方面（博物馆，教室和基于网络的学习环境）进行。此外，研究的核心是美国历史档案。S.人口普查数据是社会科学学科研究实践的核心，也是大众新闻媒体的核心，与人们对我们社会的理解高度相关。

This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM Program in the Division of Undergraduate Education and the Discovery Research K12 Program in the Division of Research on Learning in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources; the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social and Behavioral Sciences; and the Cyberlearning program in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering. This is a research program to promote and study effective strategies and habits of mind for understanding complex geospatial data using interactive visualization tools, and to generate and test design strategies for such tools in three contexts: an online data access website, interactive museum exhibit, and social science classrooms. All three research sites will utilize geographic information system (GIS) visualization tools to give learners access to geospatially-referenced historical U. S. Census data for examining changing populations across space and time. These complex data tools are increasingly used in different disciplines and in multiple aspects of everyday life. However, how learners interact with them is still poorly understood. The three research sites will strategically employ multiple, coordinated research methods, including design-experimentation, machine-learning analyses, multimodal interaction analyses, and grounded-theory generation of hypotheses. The outcomes of these empirical studies, coordinated across three contexts, will be used for iterative generation and evaluation of design strategies to promote effective reasoning with complex data for learners in each of these learning environments. This project also will build a coherent, interdisciplinary understanding of representational fluency for complex geospatial data across learning contexts. Intellectual Merit: The merit of this research program derives from its fundamental interdisciplinarity, combining research methods, concepts, and design expertise from Sociology, Computer Science, the Learning Sciences, and GIS design and large-scale implementation, in the service of addressing pressing questions about how people learn with social-scientific data. Because the proposed research does not fit neatly within any single academic discipline, it is an ideal match for the goals of the INSPIRE program. The conceptual and methodological diversity of this project contributes to its potentially transformative nature, as a model for cross-discipline collaboration in transforming status-quo approaches to studying data visualization and the design of learning environments. The collaborating investigators, as active members of multiple research communities and regular contributors to the work of educational practitioners, are uniquely situated to effectively translate empirical research findings into accessible designs and professional development opportunities across multiple communities.Broader Impacts: The proposed project has the potential to have substantial impact due to the exceptional scale of dissemination currently realized by the Social Explorer project and related installations at the New York Science Museum, as well as the diversity of audiences for design-based research conducted in these three contexts (museum, classroom and web-based learning environments). In addition, the core of the research is the archive of historical U. S. Census data, which is central to research practices across social science disciplines, as well as popular news media, and is also highly relevant to people's understandings of our society.