Part 1: March 13, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 2: March 20, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Part 3: March 27, 2019 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. ET
Overview
A picture is worth a thousand words, but developing a data picture worth a thousand words involves careful thought and planning. IT leaders are often in need of sharing their story and vision for the future with campus partners and campus leadership. Delivering this message in a compelling way takes a significant amount of thought and planning. This session will take participants through the process of constructing their story, how to (and how not to) incorporate data and anecdotes effectively, how to design clear data visualizations, and how to present their story with confidence.
Learning Objectives
During this course, participants will:
Develop a story that elicits a specific outcome
Identify and effectively use data elements to support a compelling story
Learn how to tell your story in a clear and effective way
NOTE: Participants will be asked to complete assignments in between the course segments that support the learning objectives stated below and will receive feedback and constructive critique from course facilitators on how to improve and shape their work.
Facilitator
Leah Lang, Director of Analytics Services, EDUCAUSE
Leah Lang leads EDUCAUSE Analytics Services, a suite of data services, products, and tools that can be used to inform decision-making about IT in higher education. The foundational service in this suite is the EDUCAUSE Core Data Services (CDS), higher education’s comprehensive IT benchmarking data service.
A newly published study gives some insight into what may be happening inside young children’s brains
“emergent literacy” — the process of learning to read.
“Goldilocks effect,” here’s what the researchers found:
In the audio-only condition (too cold): language networks were activated, but there was less connectivity overall. “There was more evidence the children were straining to understand.”
In the animation condition (too hot): there was a lot of activity in the audio and visual perception networks, but not a lot of connectivity among the various brain networks.
Delivery Mode : Asynchronous Workshop Levels : Beginner,Intermediate Eligible for Online Teaching Certificate elective : No
Data visualization is about presenting data visually so we can explore and identify patterns in the data, analyze and make sense of those patterns, and communicate our findings. In this course, you will explore those key aspects of data visualization, and then focus on the theories, concepts, and skills related to communicating data in effective, engaging, and accessible ways.
This will be a hands-on, project-based course in which you will apply key data visualization strategies to various data sets to tell specific data stories using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Practice data sets will be provided, or you can utilize your own data sets.
Week 1: Introduction and Tool Setup
Week 2: Cognitive Load and Pre-Attentive Attributes
Week 3: Selecting the Appropriate Visualization Type
Week 4: Data Stories and Context
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to create basic data visualizations that are effective, accessible, and engaging. In support of that primary objective, you will:
Describe the benefits of data visualization for your professional situation
Identify opportunities for using data visualization
Use appropriate accessibility strategies for data tables
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets is required to successfully complete this course. Resources will be included to help you with the basics should you need them, but time spent learning the tools is not included in the estimated time for completing this course.
What are the key takeaways from this course?
The ability to explain how data visualization is connected to data analytics
The ability to identify key data visualization theories
Creating effective and engaging data visualizations
Applying appropriate accessibility strategies to data visualizations
Who should take this course?
Instructional designers, faculty, and higher education administrators who need to present data in effective, engaging, and accessible ways will benefit from taking this course
In education, storytelling tools help connect students with curriculum, lead to effective classroom engagement, and drive faculty community-building by empowering educators to connect authentically.
1: MAKE PEOPLE ROOT FOR YOU
2: HAVE A FEW GO-TO STORIES AT THE READY
3: STORIES ARE ABOUT HOW YOU FELT
4: THIS MAY SEEM OBVIOUS, BUT “Stories have a beginning, middle, and an end
5: GOOD STORIES ARE UNIVERSAL
6: DON’T BE BORING
the trending but undefined concepts of digital storytelling and immersive learning
definition
Storytelling is a logical form of thought. It is an analytical process including perception, labeling, organizing, categorizing real and imaginary objects and their real and imaginary relations in speech.
Q: What do you think immersive documentation technologies such as 360 images and videos can bring to this process?
V: 360 degree media and virtual reality are cultural-historically developed tools that mediate our relationship to the world in a new way. They expand the possible fields of perception transcending space and time. Perception precedes other psychological functions.
Definition
Immersive storytelling can be understood as an activity through which students use language to visualize relations and meaning in 360 degree digital environments. Naming or describing relations between objects in our field of perception using verbal or visual language awakens intellectual processes fundamental to learning.
Q: Would you say immersive storytelling is a form of creative play?
V: That is a possible interpretation. Play is a psychological process through which we create an imaginary situation or place, reflecting or separating objects and their actual meaning, or creating new meanings. The ability to digitally create and modify situations and environments can be understood as a form of play, opening a realm of spontaneity and freedom, connected with pleasure.
Q: Can robots help us learn? Is AI already the More Knowledgeable Other?
V: The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) refers to anyone or anything who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept. If a robot with artificial intelligence can function as an MKO and support our problem solving, it can expand our Zone of Proximal Development.
Juxtapose JS from Knight Lab is a free tool for making and hosting side-by-side comparisons of images. The tool was designed to help people see before and after views of a location, a building, a person, or anything else that changes appearance over time. Juxtapose JS will let you put the images into a slider frame that you can embed into a webpage where viewers can use the slider to reveal more or less of one of the images.
Storyline JS is one of the newer Knight Lab offerings. This beta product is designed to help students tell stories with data. The basic purpose of Storyline JS is to help students can create interactive line graphs. Students add annotations to the data points their line graphs. Those annotations are used to tell the story of the data represented in the graph.
Scene VR is another beta product from Knight Lab. The purpose of Scene VR is to enable users to stitch together panoramic images and VR images to create an immersive photo story. Stories published through Scene VR can be embedded into websites and viewed on desktop computers as well as on tablets and mobile phones.
If you want to embed audio into a written story, Soundcite JS is the tool for you. Soundcite JS lets you add audio clips to a written story. When Soundcite JS is properly used, a play button appears where you specify in the text. For example, if I wrote a story that included a scene in which a dog barks, I could have “the dog barks at the stranger” be highlighted with a play button that when clicked plays the sound of a dog barking.
StoryMap JS lets you combine elements of timelines and maps to create mapped stories. On StoryMap JS you create slides that are matched to locations on your map. Each slide in your story can include images or videos along with text. As you scroll through your story there are simple transitions between each slide. StoryMap JS integrates with your Google Drive account. To get started with StoryMap JS you have to grant it access to your Google Drive account. StoryMap JS will create a folder in your Google Drive account where all of your storymap projects will be saved. With StoryMap JS connected to your Google Drive account you will be able to pull images from your Google Drive account to use in your StoryMap JS projects. Here’s a good tutorial video made by Jan Serie Center’s Digital Liberal Arts initiative at Macalester College.
Teachers can bring VR stories into the classroom in many different ways for meaningful learning experiences. Imagine a scavenger hunt where students narrate a story based on what they find. Or consider using objects they see to identify vocabulary words or recognize letters. Students should have purpose in their viewing and it should directly connect to standards.
Similar to the new movie, Ready Player One, they provide an intense experience where the viewer feels like they are in the center of the story.
Using a mobile device or tablet, the student can start the story and look around the scene based on their interest, rather than the cameras focus. New apps such as Baobab VR have continued to appear with more interactions and engagement.
A creative way to have your students create their own virtual stories is using the app Roundme. Upload your 360 image and add directional sound, links and content. Upload portals to walk the viewer into multiple scenes and then easily share the stories by link to the story.
Newer augmented reality apps that work with ARKit have taken another approach to storytelling. Augmented Stories and My Hungry Caterpillar.Qurious, a company that is working on a release blending gaming, making and storytelling in one app.
Storyfab, turns our students into the directors of the show
A new AR book, SpyQuest, has moved the immersive experience a big step forward as it helps define the story by bringing the images to life. Through the camera lens on a device, the stories make students the agents in an adventure into the world of espionage. The augmented reality experiences on the images use the accompanying app to scan the scene and provide further insight into the story.
A study that looked at reader engagement across articles that contained charts and infographics vs. articles that were text-only found that those with graphical storytelling, or what I like to call data storytelling, had up to 34 percent more comments and shares and a 300 percent improvement on the depth of scroll down the page.
Using storytelling techniques to present data not only makes it more visually appealing but also enables easy spotting of key trends, seamless results-tracking, and quick goal-monitoring.
Here are things that can help you build a bridge from your current methods to effective data storytelling–
Choose a topic by identifying your target audience, the goal of your visual, what you would like to achieve.
Organize your data by thinking about what you want to convey and then get rid of anything that doesn’t help you tell that story.
Spend time making your visualization look sharp by keeping it simple, using color and interactivity.
A few bonus tips to make your data visualizations really pop–
Don’t use more than two graphs at a time so as not to confuse participants.
Stick with one color per graph; making things multicolored will cause data to look jumbled.
Give context to your concept. Introduce your idea slowly and tell the story of what you want your data to reveal instead of assuming everyone in the room is on the same page.
Try using interactive data storytelling techniques to support your data.
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more on digital storytelling in this IMS blog
Project Hikari: Tales of the Wedding Rings lets you walk into a manga and become part of the story.
Japanese company Square Enix is looking to broaden the VR storytelling conversation by bringing 3 genres together into one incredible VR experience with Project Hikari: Tales of the Wedding Rings,
“We wanted to do something differently with this technology—we wanted to take VR into a different kind of direction,” Sou told VRScout in an interview. “We asked ourselves: how do we make content that is really unique, and something only our company can do?”
The team realized that manga could provide a creative new avenue of immersive story. Their approach was to create a style that blends animation and comic—giving you the ability to move in and out of panels. Sometimes you can see a range of still panels, others you’re engulfed in the animation of one scene.
I worried that the linear narrative of the manga might interfere with the immersion of VR, or that voiceover narration would keep me from discovering aspects of the story myself.
That worry was completely eliminated almost immediately the moment I put the headset on and the experience began. The Square Enix team was very creative with how they used narration along with the animation within the panels to bring the experience to life. I loved this VR take on the manga, and found Tales of the Wedding Rings to be an incredible experience that honored both mediums.
It’s a cross-section of a lot of different mediums because you have VR, manga (comics), and animation
Leah Lang, Director of Analytics Services, EDUCAUSE