ISSS608 2016-17 T1 Assign2 Lim Hui Ting Jaclyn Visualisations

Intro

Approach

Final Visualisations

Comparison & Conclusion

Visualisation 1: What are the main reasons for faculty members to use Wikipedia?

Methodology

To answer the question, I have decided to display a visualisation related to the two categories of the two main reasons why faculty members would use Wikipedia.

First, Divergent Bar Charts were used to display the questions related to using Wikipedia as a Teaching Resource or a Collaboration Platform. This is because divergent bar charts help to display the percentages of likert scale values of 1-5 on the same bar, and users will be able to see the distribution of scores for each question. The average score was also included, in the bar charts. Although the average score cannot be relied on, by its own, it can come handy when paired with a divergent bar chart.

The divergent bar charts were coloured on a spectrum of two colours, red to blue. This allows us to see the values of 5, that represent "Strongly Agree" can be identified with the portions of the bars that are in dark blue. The values of 1, that represent "Strongly Disagree" can be identified with the portion of the bars that are in dark red.

Other variables were added to the dashboard as well, such as Domain, Position, and UserWiki. These variables were represented in bar charts. The area of the bar represents the distinct count of IDs within each attribute of the variable. A filter function was added to each of these bar charts as well. As such, in the dashboard, the user will be able see which category of each variable uses Wikipedia more as a teaching resource and/ or a collaborative platform, as the divergent bar charts will change according to the filtered variables.

A screenshot of the dashboard can be seen below. It was done using Tableau.

Second, Parallel Coordinates were also used to allow for better comparison. In the following visualisation that was done using Tibco Spotfire, I plotted the parallel coordinates plot of both categories against each other. In this visualisation, as seen in the screenshot, I highlighted the values that corresponded with faculty members who were registered users of Wikipedia.

A screenshot of the parallel coordinate plot can be seen below.

Questions

Qn Code	Question - Teaching Resource
BI1	In the future I will recommend the use of Wikipedia to my colleagues and students
BI2	In the future I will use Wikipedia in my teaching activity
EXP1	I consult Wikipedia for issues related to my field of expertise
EXP2	I consult Wikipedia for other academic related issues
QU1	Articles in Wikipedia are reliable
QU2	Articles in Wikipedia are updated
QU3	Articles in Wikipedia are comprehensive
Qu4	In my area of expertise, Wikipedia has a lower quality than other educational resources
USE1	I use Wikipedia to develop my teaching materials
VIS3	I cite Wikipedia in my academic papers

Qn Code	Question - Collaborative Platform
EXP4	I contribute to Wikipedia (editions, revisions, articles improvement...)
EXP5	I use wikis to work with my students
USE2	I use Wikipedia as a platform to develop educational activities with students
VIS1	Wikipedia improves visibility of students' work
VIS2	It is easy to have a record of the contributions made in Wikipedia

Visualisation

Parallel Coordinates by Tibco Spotfire:

Divergent Bar Charts by Tableau:

The actual Dashboard can be found here.

Observation & Insights

• Faculty members are more likely to use Wikipedia as a Teaching Resource than a Collaborative Platform.
• Faculty members tend to consult Wikipedia for other academic related issues, as this has a the highest number of responses of "Agree" (5) and "Strongly Agree" (5)
• The main reason why they use Wikipedia as a Teaching Resource is because the articles in Wikipedia are updated
• Most of these faculty members who are users, come from UOC, and they're Adjunct Professors. The domain that they are from differs, and most of them come from the others category
• On the other hand, these users do not tend to use Wikipedia as a Collaborative Platform, as it can be seen that they do not contribute to Wikipedia, and use it as a platform to develop educational activities with their students

Visualisation 2: What is the profile of faculty members who are users of Wikipedia?

Methodology

For this visualisation, I decided to use a Treemap Representation to display the findings. Treemaps allow us to visualise and analyse hierarchical data. In this case, as I wanted to find out the profile of faculty members who will be more likely to be users of Wikipedia, I could achieve an organised multivariate hierarchical visualisation, by using a pivot-by-size layout. I have made 2 different Treemaps, one using Tibco Spotfire, and the other using Tableau. Both treemaps differ due to the visualisation options provided by both softwares.

The hierarchy that I've set for the visualisation (in Tibco Spotfire) is as follows:

• Domain: values of 1-6 refers differing categories of domains (refer to attribute table above)
• Phd: 0 represents no Phd, 1 represents Phd
• Gender: 0 represents Male, 1 represents Female
• Years of Experience in bins

I also added a filter to ensure that only the registered users of Wikipedia were captured in the treemap visualisation. The size and the colour of the treemap representation is based on the count of distinct ID values. I used a range of blues, from the lightest shade that represents the smallest area, to the darkest shade of blue that represents the largest area.

The hierarchy that I've set for the visualisation (in Tableau) is as follows:

• University
• Position in UPF
• Position in UOC
• Domain
• PHD

I added 3 different filters to this representation. The first one being Categories, to allow users to see the typical profile of users based on each categorical grouping. The second one being Likert Value, to capture the respondents' response. The last one being a filter with regards to the years of experience that each faculty member had, so that users view the difference between members who have had a lot of experience, and those with the least expereince.

The size and the colour of the treemap representation is based on the count of distinct ID values. I used a range of blues, from the lightest shade that represents the smallest area, to the darkest shade of blue that represents the largest area.

Visualisation

Tibco Spotfire Treemap:

A video of the visualisation can be found here: Treemap Profile

Tableau Treemap:

The Dashboard for the visualisation above can be found here: User Profile Dashboard

Observation & Insights

• The highest number of Wikipedia users are Adjunct or Lecturer Faculty members who are from UOC only. They do not have a PHD, are males and tend to have less than 5 years of experience in their field
• In general, most users of Wikipedia are those who only teach in UOC, and are adjunct faculty members. From the Treemap in Tableau, we can also see that the group of users of Wikipedia with the largest group of "Strongly Agree" (5) for all 4 categories (CP, OPP, TR, WP) belong to this profile.
• As for the faculty members in UPF, it can be noted that the profile with the most number of users of Wikipedia belong to adjunct faculty members who are males, with PHDs, and have 20-30 years of experience.

Visualisation 3: Are there differences between faculty members solely in UOC, and in UPF, with regards to their usage of Wikipedia?

Methodology

I decided to find out the differences between faculty members who solely teach in UOC, as compared to UPF professors (of which some may be teaching in UOC) and their usage of Wikipedia because of the differences in school environments. UOC is an internet- centered open university, whereas UPF is a public university. Both of them are based in Spain. As such, by finding out the differences, I would be able to see if the environment that these faculty members were from will impact the survey results.

To compare the differences, I used three different visualisation methods to be able to understand the survey results better.

First, using Tibco Spotfire, I created another Treemap Representation. In this case, as I wanted to find out the profile of faculty members of differing universities and their likelihood of using Wikipedia, I could achieve an organised multivariate hierarchical visualisation, by using a pivot-by-size layout

The hierarchy that I've set for the visualisation (in Tibco Spotfire) is as follows:

• Userwiki: 0 represents not a registered Wikipedia user, 1 represents a registered Wikipedia user
• UPF: 0 represents faculty members solely based in UOC, 1 represents faculty members in UPF
• Domain: values of 1-6 refers differing categories of domains (refer to attribute table above)
• Phd: 0 represents no Phd, 1 represents Phd
• Years of Experience in bins

I also added a filter to ensure that only the registered users of Wikipedia were captured in the treemap visualisation. The size and the colour of the treemap representation is based on the count of distinct ID values. I used a range of blues, from the lightest shade that represents the smallest area, to the darkest shade of blue that represents the largest area.

The next visualisation representation I used was Parallel Coordinates using Tibco Spotfire. This visual representation was done for three categories: Perception and Usage. I used parallel coordinates as it would allow the user to look at the variation of answers per question, and to spot trends. In this case, the charts are coloured as well. Blue represents responses of faculty members who were only from UOC. Green represents responses of faculty members who are from UPF. From the visualisation charts below, we will be able to see the differences in responses between the two universities. I also filtered out responses of users who were not registered users of Wikipedia, as the key question relates to registered users of Wikipedia.

The last visualisation method I used was Divergent Bar Charts. There are 3 categories of Divergent Bar Charts that were introduced in the dashboard, University Environment, Perception, and Usage. These divergent bar charts allow us to see the variation of responses of individuals.

The divergent bar charts were coloured on a spectrum of two colours, red to blue. This allows us to see the values of 5, that represent "Strongly Agree" can be identified with the portions of the bars that are in dark blue. The values of 1, that represent "Strongly Disagree" can be identified with the portion of the bars that are in dark red. Additional filters, such as "YearsExp" and "Age" were added to allow the user to filter the data to see the changes in responses (in the divergent bar charts).

Questions

Qn Code	Question - Perception of Online Platforms
PF1	I contribute to blogs
PF2	I actively participate in social networks
PF3	I publish academic content in open platforms
SA1	It is important to share academic content in open platforms
SA2	It is important to publish research results in other media than academic journals or books
SA3	It is important that students become familiar with online collaborative environments

Qn Code	Question - Perception of Wikipedia
ENJ1	The use of Wikipedia stimulates curiosity
ENJ2	The use of Wikipedia is entertaining
PEU1	Wikipedia is user-friendly
PEU2	It is easy to find in Wikipedia the information you seek
PEU3	It is easy to add or edit information in Wikipedia
PU1	The use of Wikipedia makes it easier for students to develop new skills
PU2	The use of Wikipedia improves students' learning
PU3	Wikipedia is useful for teaching

Qn Code	Question - University Environment
IM1	The use of Wikipedia is well considered among colleagues
IM2	In academia, sharing open educational resources is appreciated
IM3	My colleagues use Wikipedia
JR1	My university promotes the use of open collaborative environments in the Internet
JR2	My university considers the use of open collaborative environments in the Internet as a teaching merit

Visualisation

Tibco Spotfire Treemap:

This second treemap was the treemap generated after narrowing down the hierarchy to focus on registered users of Wikipedia.

Tibco Spotfire Parallel Coordinates:

Tableau Dashboard:

The Dashboard for the visualisation above can be found here: Dashboard

Observation & Insights

	Faculty Members from UOC Only	Faculty Members from UPF
Perception	UOC faculty members tend to have a higher perception of Wikipedia. This is possibly because Wikipedia has been used often as a teaching resource in UOC. As such, the responses tend to be better.	UPF faculty members tend to have a higher perception of online platforms. However, their perception of Wikipedia seems to be more distributed. This means that there are mixed reviews on Wikipedia. This could also be because UPF is a public university, and some of its faculty members are also faculty members of UOC, an online university that may encourage the use of Wikipedia more.
Usage	Amongst the users of Wikipedia, the ones who are UOC faculty members tend to have a better response towards using Wikipedia as a teaching resource. This can be observed in the parallel coordinates plot where the parallel lines that represents UOC faculty members (green in colour) are higher than that of UOC faculty members (blue in colour).	Amongst the users of Wikipedia, the ones who are UPF faculty members tend to have a better response towards using Wikipedia as a collaborative platform. This can be observed in the parallel coordinates plot where the parallel lines that represents UOC faculty members (blue in colour) tend to be higher than UPF faculty members (green in colour).
University Environment	The environment in UPF tends to be more encouraging of the use of Wikipedia. It can be seen from the parallel coordinates plot where the lines representing UPF (in green) tend to be higher than that of UOC (in blue). This can be attributed to the nature of UPF, which is an internet-based university. As such, the likelihood of the school using resources such as Wikipedia would be higher, and hence, Wikipedia would be more encouraged.	The University Environment in UOC tends to be less encouraging of the use of Wikipedia. It can be seen from the parallel coordinates plot where the lines representing UOC (in blue) tend to be lower than that of UPF (in green). This can probably be attributed to the fact that the school is a public university that uses a variety of teaching resources that are not limited to the internet.
Profile	A bulk of users who are UOC-only faculty members are from the Engineering & Architecture, Arts & Humanities and others domains, with no PHD, and less than 5 years of experience. These are the faculty members who tend to use Wikipedia as a teaching resource.	Interestingly, the profile of the group of UPF faculty members who those from the others domain, with a PHD, and 20-30 years of experience. This is different from faculty members from UOC, as the ones who are more likely to use Wikipedia in UOC tend to not have a PHD. A possible explanation could be that this is a group of faculty members who find it a good platform to use as a collaborative space.
Responses	In general, the responses from UOC faculty members seem to be more positive with regards to the encouragement of the use of Wikipedia on campus. The university environment in UOC encourages the use of open collaborative environments in the internet. This can be seen from the charts, where more than 60% of respondents responded to JR1 with at least an "agree". The perception of Online Platforms seems to be more attributed to social acceptance within the university. As seen that SA1, SA2, and SA3, tend to have relatively positive responses. It can be seen that a lot of faculty members do feel that Wikipedia is good as a teaching response, as seen from the width of "Agree" and "Strongly Agree" areas in the bar charts, at least, more than that as compared to using Wikipedia as a collaborative platform.	As compared to UOC, the university environment in UPF does not seem to be as encouraging of faculty members to use Wikipedia. This can be seen from the lower "Agree" to "Strongly Agree" responses in the bar charts. As mentioned earlier, this could be due to the nature of the school. The perception of Online Platforms seems to be better than that of UOC, despite the school environment. This can be especially due to faculty members believing the importance in sharing academic content in open platforms (SA1) and for students to be more familiar with online collaborative environments (SA3). The perception of Wikipedia seems to be higher than that of UOC as well, because the faculty members find that Wikipedia is user-friendly, and that it is easy to find the information that you need. Last but not least, more of the users of Wikipedia in UPF strongly believe that Wikipedia is a good teaching resource, as compared to using Wikipedia as a collaborative platform.

Links to Visualisations

Visualisation 1: Tableau Dashboard

Visualisation 2: Tibco Spotfire Dashboard Tableau Dashboard

Visualisation 3: Tableau Dashboard