Guest Editorial-Knowledge Visualization for Learning and Knowledge Management
Year: 2011
Type: editorial
Abstract: Knowledge visualization is an emerging area, in which visual imagery is used to construct and convey complex insights for improving understanding and communication. Knowledge visualization has been widely used in various learning environments to augment cognition, facilitate thinking and scientific inquiries, and assist meta-cognition. By representing cognitive structures or mental models using various techniques, knowledge visualization has the potential to facilitate the construction of understandings at a deeper level as well as with multiple perspectives such as interpretation and abstraction. Interpretation employs a familiar representation to support or revise misconceptions of the understanding of less familiar or more abstract knowledge. Examples include conveying an abstract idea by relating it to a concrete phenomenon, relating new insights to already understood concepts, and simulating complex objects or processes. Abstraction, on the other hand, refers to “throwing details ” by synthesis and generalization. Abstraction exposes the underlying structure of a concept, or abstraction can involve the creation and organization of high level concepts, actions, and procedures in the form of concept maps (Novak, 1998), knowledge structures, conceptual frameworks, and so on. Knowledge conveyed by abstraction is usually schematic and analytic, with a format that is typically highly structured and systemic due to the reduction of conceptual complexity and the articulation of relationships (Ainsworth, 2006). In addition to deep understanding and high level thinking, knowledge visualization can support meta-cognition by helping learners develop an awareness of their mental representations,
Authors: Minhong Wang, Michael J. Jacobson
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2132136566