ACM SIGGRAPH
Curriculum for Visualization

Editor: G. Domik (domik[at]uni-paderborn.de)
prepared by the
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Subcommittee
on
"Education for Visualization"

The "Education for Visualization Committee", or EVC for short, has the goal "to further development of guidelines and teaching materials for visualization curricula and courses".

This website makes recommendations for the preparation of courses on "computer-generated visualizations meant to be viewed by a human" (such courses or curricula may be entitled "scientific visualization", "information visualization" or similar). This document is addressed to the teaching communities at universities, colleges or similar institutions for the preparation of undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate courses and/or curricula. Please send any critizisms and comments to domik[at]uni-paderborn.de!

Core topics were identified that are essential to gain necessary skills to become an expert in visualization ("computer-generated visualizations meant to be viewed by a human" will be shortened to "visualization" in this document). The reader will also find a classification of skill levels for visualization experts, and a matrix relating topics and skills. A number of educational institutions have made their course outlines available to the public; these visualization courses WorldWide are updated periodically (last update 2008). These course outlines contain information on the offering institution, educator and the title of the course, objectives and topics of course, lab setup, references and (if available) extended information on student profiles, assignmens and more. If you want to make information on your course available to others please send the necessary facts to domik@uni-paderborn.de.

Recommended use of this document: We encourage educators to expand individual themes to encompass particular objectives of their students and we encourage educators to collapse proposed themes to fit visualization education into a curriculum that can not spare a full course on visualization. One or two weeks of well-prepared visualization topics as part of a course on high-performance computing or computer graphics will already expand the horizon of a student.

The newest update will always appear on http://www.uni-paderborn.de/cs/vis  

Contributors to this website were:

Polly Baker, Indiana University, baker at iu dot edu
Gitta Domik, University of Paderborn, domik at uni-paderborn dot de
Georges Grinstein, University of Massachusetts Lowell, grinstein at cs dot uml dot edu
Thomas T. Hewett, Drexel University, hewett at duvm dot ocs dot drexel edu
Mike McGrath, School of Mines, mmcgrath at slate dot mines dot edu
Scott Owen, Georgia State University, sowen at cs dot gsu dot edu
Xiaohua Sun, Clarkson University, xsun at clarkson dot edu

Reviewers to this website were:

Ken Brodlie, University of Leeds, kwb at dcs dot leeds dot ac dot uk
Marie-Theresa Rhyne, Center for Visualization and Analytics, rhyne at siggraph dot org
Bill Hibbard, University of Wisconsin, whibbard at macc dot wisc dot edu
Barbara Mones-Hattal, University of Washington, mones at cs dot washington dot edu