An interdisciplinary data visualization course with laboratory will be implemented for upper division engineering and science students at The University of Memphis. To support the undergraduates’ ability to develop custom, software applications; and to facilitate discovery of features present in large data sets; a subset of exemplary materials, modules, and source code will be adapted and integrated from the following sources:

1. An undergraduate computational science across the curriculum (CSAC) program funded by the NSF, Battelle Memorial Institute, and W. M. Keck Foundation and directed by Capital University

2. Graduate computational science visualization modules developed by The University of Edinburgh

3. Professional workshop materials developed by The University of Groningen

     A set of modules for integrating visualization techniques into a CSAC program, which were originally developed using several software tools and languages, will be adapted for engineering and science majors using a single, integrated visualization development platform. By using the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), rather than a variety of packages, engineering and science students will not only acquire understanding of basic visualization techniques, but also gain competency using a unified, software development platform to create/modify/test algorithms. Moreover, engineering and science students will contribute to the implementation of custom, visualization applications that will be utilized by end users including high school teachers and students in the Mid-South region. In addition, course materials, which were originally intended for beginning graduate students of computational science and working professionals, will be modified for use by undergraduates.

     Work will focus on contemporary challenges to achieve a broader impact by incorporating mandatory design content that engages undergraduates with the local community. Learning objectives include the following:

1. Increase undergraduate and high-school students’ comprehension of data-intensive phenomena by reducing the cognitive load required when extracting meaning from multi-dimensional data.

2. Increase undergraduates’ ability to implement a custom, visualization application based on a set of user-defined requirements.

3. Infuse undergraduates into civic engagement by having them work on interdisciplinary teams, which include high-school teachers, to implement and subsequently extend and maintain a repository of contextually-relevant, visualization applications to support inquiry-based learning opportunities for high school students.

4. Increase awareness and readiness of high-school teachers to integrate custom, visualization tools into their own classrooms by linking tools developed by undergraduates at The University of Memphis to relevant experiments and studies which could be conducted within the teachers’ pedagogical activities.

     The intellectual merit of this project is that it facilitates participants’ comprehension/experience of scientific/engineering development from two perspectives: (1) as learners exploring and developing hypotheses about data-intensive domains; (2) and as developers of state-of the-art applications that link university-level topics to high-school level content.

     The broader impact of this project is exemplified by these complementary perspectives. It is proposed that as our high-school teacher participants use new tools (whose design they influenced) they will instill in their students and colleagues an enthusiasm and a sense of participation and confidence in approaching data-intensive, scientific and engineering topics, as well as an awareness of the university as a member of the community.

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