Showing posts with label argument. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 April 2022

Behind 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course'

Written for visual design educators and social semiotic researchers interested in students' use of data visualisations for argument.

Professor Arlene Archer and my chapter, 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course', is to be published in 'Learning Design Voices'. Edited by Professor Laura Czerniewicz, Tasneem Jaffer and Shanali Govender. the book is produced by the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). Its compilation aims to catalyse a discussion of key themes shaping practice in online learning design. Our contribution falls under the book's 'Learning materials, activities and processes' section. The book's other two tackle 'Learning Design as field, praxis and identity' and 'Humanising Learning Design'.

Our new chapter is a sequel to 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' (2020), in which we proposed the framework for argument in data visualizations shown in Table 1. This social semiotic framework provides a holistic view that is useful for providing feedback and recognising students’ work as realised through the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meta-functions. For example, in addition to the verbal (written) mode that they are usually assessed on in Higher Education, students' digital poster designs must also consider composition, size, shape and colour choices.

Table 1. Framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.

When the course was first introduced, many students' were able to produce attractive posters, but there seemed scope to support them in developing better arguments by revising the course's contents. Our follow-up piece describes how using this framework proved helpful for changing a second-year journalism, blended-learning course and helping students' argument-development:

In five-weeks, the lecturer had to teach novices- data infographics, graphic design and Excel software, visual design aesthetics and multimodal argumentation via data visualization designs. Many changes were considered for improving the posters’ argument and the lecturer changed the 2018 syllabus structure by adding two new sections (for ‘Multimodal argument’ and ‘Creative ideas for infographic design’, see Table 2).

Table 2. Lesson topic changes from 2017 to 2018's course

A midway assessment was also introduced in which students’ infographic arguments were tested as works-in-progress. Reviewers’ feedback presented those who went for the wrong goalposts with opportunities for changing their direction by the final assessment. The new sections and mid-way assessment proved helpful for supporting 2018's students on aggregate with developing better arguments via infographic posters. The initial course was arguably weighted too much on using new tools for aesthetic design. By contrast, the new iteration was weighted towards teaching opaque discursive conventions and how to make a coherent, strong infographic poster argument using different modes that travel well as they traverse different formats.

To illustrate the benefits of this shift, our article focuses on two students, whose work differed from those of the 2017’s class in presenting meta-level critiques. As a result of some of the curriculum interventions, students began to engage with normative attitudes and societal discourses that shaped the information they shared. They began to flag how the graphs they shared might represent a numeric simplification of a qualitatively complex situation, and to point to the ways in which the categories for comparison may be blurred.

Before presenting two in-depth student cases, we described how several principles for learning design informed our analysis of student work using this framework:

1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices

"Tumi" and "Mark" followed different approaches to metalevel critique in their data visualization project's. Tumi’s presentation (see Figures 1 and 2) critiqued the usefulness of Youth Explorer for exploring education in a peripheral township community versus a suburban ‘core community’. In contrasting the Langa township ward's educational attendance data versus the leafy suburb of Pinelands, she flagged why the results may be skewed unfavourably against Langa- children from peripheral communities often travel to core communities for schooling, so data for both core and peripheral communities “can be blurred to some extent”. Tumi also flagged that youth accused of contact crime were not necessarily ‘convicted or found guilty’.

Figure 1. Tumi's findings slide 2018

Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018

By contrast, Mark’s poster (see Figure 3) critiqued the statistics available for understanding ‘poor grade 8 systemic results’ and the reasons for higher drop-out rates in schooling between suburbs. His poster explored the limitations of what Youth Explorer can tell us about systemic tests and how these link to dropout rates and final year pass rates. He argued that a shortcoming is the dataset’s failure to convey 'the role that extra-curricular support plays' in shaping learners’ results. Mark's poster reflected the fact that many children from affluent homes go for extra lessons after school to improve subject results. This knowledge of concerted cultivation was based on his personal experience, but is unaccounted for in most official accounts of educational input.

Figure 3. Mark's data visualisation poster 2018

Both cases reveal how teaching a social semiotic approach for analysing and producing argument proved helpful. It informed changes to a data visualisation poster course that could better support students’ development as critical designers and engaged citizens- the two aspirant media professionals' meta-critiques flagged important challenges in relying on data that may be incorrect and incomplete, accurately spotlighting the inherent difficulties of simplifying qualitative complexity into numbers for their audiences.

If you would like to view a presentation on our research, please visit my earlier blog post at
https://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2021/10/the-presentation-developing-critique.html.

Acknowledgements

The research is based upon work supported by the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme. Travis’ research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-21) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Both authors thank the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies for facilitating our research with students between 2017 and 2018. In particular, we thank Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans for their valued assistance. We also greatly appreciate the feedback from the editors and reviewers at Learning Design Voices.

Need support doing Social Semiotic research in Africa?

Both Arlene and Travis are members of the South African Multimodality in Education research group (SAME) hosted by UCT. Should you be interested in sharing your multimodal research project with its experts, please contact SAME.

I hope that you will read our chapter and find it informative. You are most welcome to give readers and I your feedback in the moderated comments section below.

Wednesday, 6 May 2020

'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' in 'Data Visualization in Society' from @AmsterdamUPress #Academicbooks #OpenAccess

Written for design educators and social semiotic researchers who are interested in infographic design and multimodal argument.

Associate Professor Arlene Archer and I wrote 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics', which was recently published in the book, Data visualization in society. Our chapter proposes a framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. This framework is applied in the chapter for investigating two second-year journalism students’ semiotic and rhetorical strategies in making arguments via data visualisation posters. We then discuss the broader implications in Higher Education for teaching students to become critical citizens via infographic poster production and analysis.

Figure 1. Data Visualization in Society book cover, Amsterdam University Press, 2020.

The chapter drew on my fieldwork as a lecturer in the multimedia production course (FAM2017S) teaching infographic poster design to journalism students at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT. I liaised with Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans in preparing a five-week course for teaching infographic poster production in 2017. Students learnt to explore educational inequalities between two suburbs in Cape Town using youthexplorer.org.za's aggregated data and to visualise their findings via infographic poster design. Arlene kindly volunteered as a guest reviewer of students' poster design progress. As novice designers, students' data visualisation arguments produced some interesting inconsistencies and disjunctures that helped inspire this chapter. Its analysis was also informed by a review of students' final posters and accompanying rationales.

In response to these concerns, Arlene proposed the framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Its components are illustrated in Table 1 below.

Table 1. A framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Archer, A. and Noakes, T. 2020.

This framework was applied in an investigation of how two infographic posters drew on semiotic and rhetorical strategies for realising argument: The semiotic strategies included their use of colour, typography and graphics, while the rhetorical strategies include establishing credibility and the use of citation. The effect that the underlying basis for comparison of data had on their contrasting arguments was examined, plus students' linked selection and processing of aggregated data. We also investigated the semiotic encoding of ideational material and the ways relationships were established within the discourse communities constructed via the data visualisations. The investigation highlights the complex entanglement of aspects of data visualisation. These include varied design processes, the underlying discourses and ideological work of data visualisations, as well as their pleasures and aesthetics. We concluded by arguing that this way of looking at academic argument has important implications for teaching these text-types in higher education in order to produce critical citizens.

We are very grateful to the book's editors, Professors Helen Kennedy and Martin Engebretsen, for their feedback and help in refining the chapter.

In 2018, I retaught infographic poster design to a new group of second years and adjusted the course to allocate more for considering argument and included this framework and the article's cases for students' consideration. Both interventions helped students to improve the critical arguments in their posters. Arlene and I are writing about these changes in a draft manuscript, 'Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualisation course'.

There are three ways you can view Data Visualization in Society digitally:

1. Its e-book page is at https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048543137/data-visualization-in-society.

2. Its Open Access version is at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvzgb8c7.

3. You can download it as an Adobe Acrobat pdf book via http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22273.

Or to purchase it in hardcopy, you can order through your local bookseller, via Amsterdam University Press for Europe/Rest of the World, or via Baker & Taylor Publisher Services for North America.

I hope that you will find our chapter informative and welcome any feedback in the comments below.