ImpVis website structure
The ImpVis website can be found here: https://impvis.co.uk. This Wiki is within a subdomain of that: https://wiki.impvis.co.uk.
The website caters for an audience comprising three groups of people:
- Learners: students of STEMM courses who use our interactive visualisations to gain a deeper understanding of abstract concepts taught within their module.
- Instructors: (mostly) staff members of HE institutions who wish to use a visualisation as a teaching & learning tool for their module.
- Creators: ImpVis project partners engaged in creating new visualisations.
The website is therefore split into three main areas: 'Learn', 'Teach' and 'Code'. Any website visitor can browse to any of these environments; however if users register with the website they will have additional functionality available to them. Registered users can request higher access permissions such as 'instructor' and 'creator' - this is described in the User roles Wiki page.
The 'Teach' environment
The ‘Teach’ environment holds every individual visualisation that has been uploaded by a creator and subsequently approved and published. Here visualisations can be sorted by category. When visualisations are launched from the 'Teach' environment, it will appear full screen (via URL parameter, eg ‘teach=1’) by default, with any text panes minimised (if the visualisation is written using the 2020 ImpVis template). If a user is signed-in to the website, they can 'favourite' visualisations.
The 'Teach' environment is designed with the needs of the instructor in mind, as they can browse the full range of ImpVis visualisations available to find ones that best fit their learning & teaching needs.
The 'Learn' environment
The ‘Learn’ area is where ‘Collections’ appear. A Collection can be a single visualisation or a combination of visualisation pages and are linked to specific modules. It is therefore particularly useful for learners, as they will easily be able to find Collections that were created specifically for their module, by filtering the Collections by module, department, or year group.
Any creator or instructor can create Collections. Any signed-in user can ‘favourite’ a Collection. A creator or instructor can copy an existing Collection to link it to their own module - this will create a stand-alone copied version of the Collection which can subsequently be edited to suit the instructor's needs.