Capturing and Sharing Know-How through Visual Process Representations: A Human-Centred Approach to Teacher Workflows

TL;DR

This paper presents Visual Process Representations (VPR), a human-centered method combining pattern mining and storytelling to visually capture and share teachers' workflows, enhancing understanding and usability for novice educators.

Contribution

It introduces VPR, a novel approach that transforms log data into intuitive visualizations, improving workflow comprehension for teachers.

Findings

Enriched visuals increased usability and engagement.

VPR improved task performance and understanding.

Limited impact on process memorability and task time.

Abstract

Knowledge Management is crucial for capturing and transferring expertise within universities, especially in high staff turnover contexts where expertise loss disrupts teaching. Documenting teachers' workflows is time-intensive and diverts experts from core responsibilities. Sequential Pattern Mining (SPM) leverages log data to identify expert workflows, offering an automated alternative to represent workflows but requiring transformation into intuitive formats for novice educators. This paper introduces Visual Process Representations (VPR), a design approach combining SPM, Knowledge Management processes, and storytelling techniques to convert expert log data into clear visualisations. We detail the design phases and report a study evaluating visual affordances (text lists vs. pictorial-style) and teachers' perceptions of four versions of the VPR with 160 higher teachers on Prolific. Results indicate improved task performance, usability, and engagement, particularly with enriched visuals, though process memorability and task time improvements were limited. The findings highlight VPR's potential to visualise workflows and support novice educators.