Visual Process Analytics (VPA) launched

Visual Process Analytics (VPA) is an online analytical processing (OLAP) program that we are developing for visualizing and analyzing student learning from complex, fine-grained process data collected by interactive learning software such as computer-aided design tools. We envision a future in which every classroom would be powered by informatics and infographics such as VPA to support day-to-day learning and teaching at a highly responsive level. In a future when every business person relies on visual analytics every day to stay in business, it would be a shame that teachers still have to read through tons of paper-based work from students to make instructional decisions. The research we are conducting with the support of the National Science Foundation is paving the road to a future that would provide the fair support for our educational systems that is somehow equivalent to business analytics and intelligence.

This is the mission of VPA. Today we are announcing the launch of this cyberinfrastructure. We decided that its first version number should be 0.1. This is just a way to indicate that the research and development on this software system will continue as a very long-term effort and what we have done is a very small step towards a very ambitious goal.


VPA is written in plain JavaScript/HTML/CSS. It should run within most browsers -- best on Chrome and Firefox -- but it looks and works like a typical desktop app. This means that while you are in the middle of mining the data, you can save what we call "the perspective" as a file onto your disk (or in the cloud) so that you can keep track of what you have done. Later, you can load the perspective back into VPA. Each perspective opens the datasets that you have worked on, with your latest settings and results. So if you are half way through your data mining, your work can be saved for further analyses.

So far Version 0.1 has seven analysis and visualization tools, each of which shows a unique aspect of the learning process with a unique type of interactive visualization. We admit that, compared with the daunting high dimension of complex learning, this is a tiny collection. But we will be adding more and more tools as we go. At this point, only one repository -- our own Energy3D process data -- is connected to VPA. But we expect to add more repositories in the future. Meanwhile, more computational tools will be added to support in-depth analyses of the data. This will require a tremendous effort in designing a smart user interface to support various computational tasks that researchers may be interested in defining.

Eventually, we hope that VPA will grow into a versatile platform of data analytics for cutting-edge educational research. As such, VPA represents a critically important step towards marrying learning science with data science and computational science.

The National Science Foundation funds large-scale applications of infrared cameras in schools

We are pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation has awarded the Concord Consortium, Next Step Living, and Virtual High School a grant of $1.2M to put innovative technologies such as infrared cameras into the hands of thousands of secondary students. This education-industry collaborative will create a technology-enhanced learning pathway from school to home and then to cognate careers, establishing thereby a data-rich testbed for developing and evaluating strategies for translating innovative technology experiences into consistent science learning and career awareness in different settings. While there have been studies on connecting science to everyday life or situating learning in professional scenarios to increase the relevance or authenticity of learning, the strategies of using industry-grade technologies to strengthen these connections have rarely been explored. In many cases, often due to the lack of experiences, resources, and curricular supports, industry technologies are simply used as showcases or demonstrations to give students a glimpse of how professionals use them to solve problems in the workplace.


Over the last few years, however, quite a number of industry technologies have become widely accessible to schools. For example, Autodesk has announced that their software products will be freely available to all students and teachers around the world. Another example is infrared cameras that I have been experimenting and blogging since 2010. Due to the continuous development of electronics and optics, what used to be a very expensive scientific instrument is now only a few hundred dollars, with the most affordable infrared camera falling below $200.

The funded project, called Next Step Learning, will be the largest-scale application of infrared camera in secondary schools -- in terms of the number of students that will be involved in the three-year project. We estimate that dozens of schools and thousands of students in Massachusetts will participate in this project. These students will use infrared cameras provided by the project to thermally inspect their own homes. The images in this blog post are some of the curious images I took in my own house using the FLIR ONE camera that is attached to an iPhone.

In the broader context, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) envisions “three-dimensional learning” in which the learning of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts is integrated with science and engineering practices. A goal of the NGSS is to make science education more closely resemble the way scientists and engineers actually think and work. To accomplish this goal, an abundance of opportunities for students to practice science and engineering through solving authentic real-world problems will need to be created and researched. If these learning opportunities are meaningfully connected to current industry practices using industry-grade technologies, they can also increase students’ awareness of cognate careers, help them construct professional identities, and prepare them with knowledge and skills needed by employers, attaining thereby the goals of both science education and workforce development simultaneously. The Next Step Learning project will explore, test, and evaluate this strategy.

Twelve Energy3D designs by Cormac Paterson

Cormac Paterson, a 17-years old student from Arlington High School in Massachusetts, has created yet another set of beautiful architectural designs using our Energy3D CAD software. The variety of his designs can be used to gauge the versatility of the software. His work is helping us push the boundary of the software and imagine what may be possible with the system.

This is the second year Cormac has worked with us as a summer intern. We are constantly impressed by his perseverance in working with the limitations of the software and around problems, as well as his ingenuity in coming up with new solutions and ideas. Working with Cormac has inspired us on how to improve our software so that it can support more students to do this kind of creative design. Our objective in the long run is to develop our software into a CAD system that is appropriate for children and yet capable of supporting authentic engineering design. Cormac's work might be an encouraging sign that we may actually be very close to realizing this goal.

Cormac also designed a building surrounded by solar trees. Solar tree is a concept that blends art and solar energy technology in a sculptural expression. An image of this post shows the result of the solar energy gains of these "trees" using the improved computational engine for solar simulation in Energy3D.