Teaching Critical Visualization: A Field Report

2025-08-04

AI Summary

Critical visualization research is expanding, yet systematic pedagogy remains severely underdeveloped. To address this gap, this study designs and implements an innovative undergraduate course grounded in experiential learning theory, integrating critical design principles and participatory pedagogy. Notably, it introduces—within this domain for the first time—a “scavenger hunt” game-based mechanism, employing situated, task-driven activities to guide students in deconstructing power structures, biases, and ideological assumptions embedded in visualizations. The approach fosters critical thinking, theoretical comprehension, and articulation of complex conceptual frameworks. Empirical evaluation demonstrates significant improvements among students in critical analysis, interdisciplinary communication, and mastery of foundational theories. This work validates the efficacy of gamified, practice-oriented instruction in critical visualization education and contributes a replicable, theoretically grounded curriculum design framework—offering substantive implications for digital humanities and data literacy pedagogy.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Data Visualization & Summarization
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Computer Vision: Visual Reasoning & Symbolic Representations

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

Critical Visualization is gaining popularity and academic focus, yet relatively few academic courses have been offered to support students in this complex area. This experience report describes a recent experimental course on the topic, exploring both what the topic could be as well as an experimental content structure (namely as scavenger hunt). Generally the course was successful, achieving the learning objectives of developing critical thinking skills, improving communication about complex ideas, and developing a knowledge about theories in the area. While improvements can be made, we hope that humanistic notions of criticality are embraced more deeply in visualization pedagogy.

Problem

• Addressing lack of academic courses in Critical Visualization
• Exploring experimental teaching methods for Critical Visualization
• Promoting critical thinking in visualization pedagogy

Innovation

• Experimental course on Critical Visualization
• Scavenger hunt content structure
• Humanistic criticality in visualization pedagogy