Early November, our research team participated the 3rd Workshop on Visualization Education, Literacy, and Activities during IEEE VIS 2025 in Vienna, Austria. Bringing together researchers and educators from visualization, learning sciences, and related fields, the workshop provided a forum to discuss advances and challenges in teaching visualization and fostering data literacy through different media, methods, and learning environments.
Paper Presentation
In Paper Session 1: Media, Tangibles & Representation, we presented “Teaching Air Quality and Data Visualization Using Tangible Models for Middle Schoolers.” The paper described our classroom activity that uses Skittles candies as tangible data to teach the Air Quality Index (AQI) and visualization concepts. Through sorting, counting, and sketching, students learn how real-world data can be represented and interpreted using the Domain–Purpose–Visual (DPV) framework [1]. The study reflected on students’ engagement and learning outcomes during the Data Visualization and the Environment summer camp.
Check out our paper here:
Interactive Activity Session
During the interactive activity session, we facilitated the Skittles Activity with around fifteen workshop participants. Framed as a classroom simulation, participants experienced how tangible and playful materials can support learning about data encoding and communication. The session concluded with group reflections on how such embodied approaches could be adapted to different teaching contexts and how materials, methods, and environments shape visualization education.
See Also:
[1] Li, Y., Endert, A., & Roberts, J. (2025). DPV (Domain, Purpose, Visual) Framework: A data visualization design pedagogical method for middle schoolers. https://diglib.eg.org/items/2d9174ce-6e19-4104-8822-b2a651cd620a