Space to Teach: Content-Rich Canvases for Visually-Intensive Education

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of content-rich, large collaborative whiteboards like SAGE3 in higher education to enhance visually intensive courses, sharing practical examples, student feedback, and usage patterns.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach of integrating advanced collaborative whiteboards into visually intensive teaching, with insights and patterns from real course implementations.

Findings

Positive student feedback on visual learning tools

Identification of effective usage patterns for content-rich canvases

Enhanced engagement in visually intensive courses

Abstract

With the decreasing cost of consumer display technologies making it easier for universities to have larger displays in classrooms, and the ubiquitous use of online tools such as collaborative whiteboards for remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, combining the two can be useful in higher education. This is especially true in visually intensive classes, such as data visualization courses, that can benefit from additional "space to teach," coined after the "space to think" sense-making idiom. In this paper, we reflect on our approach to using SAGE3, a collaborative whiteboard with advanced features, in higher education to teach visually intensive classes, provide examples of activities from our own visually-intensive courses, and present student feedback. We gather our observations into usage patterns for using content-rich canvases in education.