VUE (Visual Understanding Environment)

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VUE

Mapping interface of VUE.
Developed by	Academic Technology group at Tufts University
Initial release	July 20, 2005^[1]
Written in	Java
OS	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Genre	Concept Mapping software
License	ECL
Website	VUE

VUE is a free, open source concept mapping application written in Java. The application is developed by the Academic Technology groupat Tufts University. VUE is licensed under the Educational Community License. VUE 2.0, the latest release, was funded under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

1 The VUE Project
2 Purpose
3 Users
4 Distinguishing Features
5 References
6 External links

[edit] The VUE Project

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project at Tufts UIT Academic Technology is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. Using VUE's concept mapping interface, faculty and students design semantic networks of digital resources drawn from digital libraries, local and remote file systems, and the Web. The resulting content maps can then be viewed and exchanged online.

[edit] Purpose

As the availability of digital information continues to increase, there is a need for flexible tools that help faculty and students integrate electronic content into their teaching and learning. While numerous applications are available for locating digital information, few tools exist for selecting, organizing and making sense of the information available to us. The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an information management application that provides an interactive, concept mapping interface to digital resources accessed via the Web, from FEDORA-based digital repositories, FTP servers or local file systems. Using a simple set of tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, faculty and students may map relationships between digital content to capture and communicate concepts and ideas. The resulting content maps can then be shared with others. VUE leverages the cognitive benefits of concept mapping as an interface and information visualization techniques to support the creation of rich resource-based, instructional or research-oriented presentations.

[edit] Users

VUE can be used by anyone interested in visually structuring digital content, whether in support of teaching difficult to understand concepts or more generally, a tool for organizing personal digital resources. While VUE can be seen as a general information management utility with broad applications, this version of VUE was designed with education in mind. VUE provides a concept mapping interface to digital libraries which allows faculty and student to link and map relationships between educational materials. VUE also supports author-defined pathways through maps of digital content, the ability to filter map content based on user-defined metadata, and the comparison of two maps side-by-side. Below are a few examples of how certain audiences have used VUE in education.

Instructors & Course Preparation

Instructors use VUE to plan or map out course content and instructional activities relative to their educational goals. Concept maps help faculty visualize the course in its entirety, as well as connections between subtopics. With VUE's rich support for digital content, these maps can be linked to related educational materials and made accessible to students online. VUE provides faculty with a highly flexible visual interface for constructing instructional maps by aggregating and organizing digital content contained within FEDORA-based digital library systems, Web sites and local file systems.

Learner & Knowledge Construction

Curricula that encourage and scaffold student exploration and the construction of connections among ideas lead to improved information retention and learning transfer. VUE provides a valuable supporting technology to such instructional activities. Through visualization and the processes of construction and annotation, VUE maps help learners establish and explore connections between topics within a complex domain. This facilitates deep learning and assists learners in connecting new information to existing knowledge.

Learning & Knowledge Assessment

Concept maps make personal understanding visible and explicit - for both teachers and students. VUE can be used to design activities where students demonstrate their understanding of the relationships among ideas and resources. VUE maps assist instructors in visualizing changes in student understandings over time.

[edit] Distinguishing Features

Concept maps have had a long and fruitful history in education for both teaching and learning. They provide visual representations of complex ideas or processes and the ways in which these elements are connected or interrelated. When concept maps and the ideas they represent are connected to digital resources, as in VUE, concept maps also become content maps. VUE was designed based upon the need for easy access to and organization of digital content, whether local or stored in persistent digital library systems. The data sources and resource panels are designed to place digital files at your fingertips in support of content mapping. In addition to an emphasis on mapping digital content, VUE also allows map authors to create visual pathways through a content map and supports the assignment of author-defined metadata to map elements. These features make complex maps accessible to learners by providing a guided tour of the content and by allowing users to search for, display and/or conceal map elements in support of customized presentations.