Opportunities to work together

There are many skills involved in developing effective visualisations for education. Not only does it require good programming skills, it also needs a sound understanding of educational design and insight into how students learn. It is difficult to acquire this wide skill set when working in isolation. ImpVis therefore develops its visualisations in staff-student partnerships (read more about what this means here). Our members benefit from each other’s expertise as learners and instructors.

Most of our developers are not yet familiar with Javascript and HTML (the programming languages on which our visualisations are based) when they join our project. Over the years we have collated our community’s experience in a set of templates, guidance documents, and links to useful online resources in order to help new developers get started. Our enthusiastic experienced students also act as mentors to new students joining our community in order to help them learn the required coding skills.

Our community comes together in various different settings, explained in the sections below.

Term-time Code & Crisps

During term time (starting in January 2022 for academic year 2021-2022) we come together every Wednesday from 12:30 for Code & Crisps. This is a commitment-free drop-in session, where we come together to work on our visualisation projects. There are always experienced students available to help new students with the process. There are no deadlines or timelines for Code & Crisps project work, as we know that everybody (students and staff) will have many commitments during this time.

For students

Code & Crisps is the ideal no-pressure environment to get to know the ImpVis team. If you wish to join, drop us an email and we will let you know when and where the next Code & Crisps session will take place!

For staff

Many staff partners come to Code & Crisps to discuss their project ideas and see how we work. Projects started during Code & Crisps often are given high priority during the summer so they are likely to be finished to a high standard. Read about proposing a new project here, or drop us an email!

I-Explore for-degree-credit module

In the first term of the year (starting October 2021) we run an I-Explore STEMM module entitled: "ImpVis: designing interactive visualisations for education". Currently this module runs for all Imperial College students who take I-Explore in their second year (Maths, Physics, Life Sciences, MBBS and BMB).

The ImpVis module brings together students, teachers and creative professionals to create innovative designs for interactive visualisations. In the module, you will explore how interactive visualisations benefit students learning abstract concepts and engage with their design directly through projects that unite technical, graphic, and learning design. Working in partnership, you will have a lasting impact by contributing to our co-created knowledgebase on how to design such learning tools for education and by implementing these innovative tools in STEMM modules in higher education.

Note that there are no coding skills required for the module, as it will focus on the design stage of the visualisation creation process. The I-Explore module counts as 5 ECTS towards your degree programme - you will receive a mark but this will not carry any weight toward your degree average. Read more about the module in the I-Explore catalogue.

Summer projects

In the second quarter of the year, we usually advertise for ImpVis summer projects on our Teams site and the StudentShaperswebsite. These are supported by a bursary to cover living costs. During this project we usually have specific targets; we focus on the maintenance and improvement of the ImpVis project, for example updating the Wiki, improving existing visualisations, making changes to the visualisation template, and trialling new ideas. To take part, you will need to respond to the advertisement and send in an application.