Evaluating the Impact of a Constructivist Approach to Treemap Literacy

Constructivist learning is based on the principle that learners construct knowledge based on their prior knowledge and experiences. We explored the impact of a constructivist approach to introduce students to the Treemaps visualization technique. We developed software that helps students understand Treemaps using a synchronized, multiview, interactive node-link representation of the same data. While students in both groups—the ones who used the node-link diagram with the Treemaps and the ones who used only the interactive Treemaps—demonstrated significant improvement in learning, students who only interacted with the Treemaps representation performed better on a variety of tasks related to reading and interpreting Treemaps.