First Invitational Summit on Educational Visualization: May 6-7, 2014

Dr. Paul Resta

I was recently invited to attend the First Invitational Summit on Educational Visualization which was held at The University of Texas in Austin, TX. In Fall 2012 I taught a graduate seminar on Computational Reasoning and many of the activities and readings from class centered on issues of data mining, Big Data, and visualization so it was a pleasure attending and taking part in this event. -Dr. Petrosino

Over the past two decades, learning that takes place or is tracked within a computer-mediated environment has grown exponentially. As a result, a tremendous amount of data is being generated that has the potential to reveal powerful insights into the teaching and learning process. Turning this mass of data into such useful insights, however, requires new techniques that can effectively facilitate exploration and discovery. 

Data visualization – long a staple of the physical sciences and engineering – offers a range of powerful tools with the potential to facilitate data intensive educational research, as well as to communicate – to students, parents, teachers, administrators, and policy-makers – valuable and actionable insights made possible by a data-rich learning environment. The Summit will bring together educational leaders and data visualization experts to understand the implications of big data in education and the increasingly important role of data visualization to help improve learning and educational decision-making, to support research and inform policy. The Summit is intended to identify the current state of the field, emerging trends, to share perspectives as to where and how visualization techniques will impact education going forward, and to develop recommendations to guide the future development of educational data visualization. 

Invitational Summit on Educational Visualization May 6-7, 2014 AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center The University of Texas at Austin | Austin, Texas Chairs Paul Resta, Ph.D. Ruth Knight Millikan Professorship in Learning Technologies College of Education The University of Texas at Austin Kelly Gaither, Ph.D. Director of Visualization Texas Advance Computing Center The University of Texas at Austin Co-Chair Paula Moeller, Ed.D. Director of College Readiness Institute for Public School Initiatives The University of Texas at Austin The Institute for Public School Initiatives          The University of Texas at Austin              5316 Hwy 290 West, Suite 510          Austin, TX 78735 512-232-2508 Dear Colleague, We would like to invite you to attend the First Invitational Summit on Educational Data Visualization to be held in the ATT Executive Conference Center, The University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas on May 6-7, 2014. As you know, education is facing a tsunami of massive data sets that offer both new opportunities as well as challenges in extracting meaning from the data in ways that can improve learning and inform policies, decision-making, instruction and research. The summit will bring educational data visualization thought leaders and innovators, together with education leaders, policy makers and researchers to share perspectives on current trends, issues, opportunities, and challenges, of educational data visualization. The summit will offer recommendations that will be released nationally to help move the field forward. This is an invitation-only event limited to 150 participants. We hope that you will join us, but if you cannot attend, we would welcome your recommendation of someone in your organization or institution to act as your representative. We would appreciate your responding by email to news@ipsi.utexas.edu to indicate whether you plan on attending the summit and you may register for the summit at:  www.edvis.org by April 11th, 2014. Warmest regards,

Dr. Paul Resta             Dr. Kelly Gaither

Sponsors Include  ACT § Intel § Pearson § SAS § Tableau § College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin     The Institute for Public School Initiatives, The University of Texas at Austin Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin