A knowledge visualization tool for teaching and learning computer engineering knowledge, concepts, and skills

Current educational environments rely primarily on a text-based syllabus approach to describing course content as well as whole curricula. This traditional approach is too limiting. It fails to delineate the relationship of concepts and skills covered in a given course to those covered by other courses. It also fails to show the knowledge base that a learner will have acquired at the end of his/her course of study, as such base relates to lifelong learning. New demands placed on teaching and learning environments call for a more engaging experience for learners. The approach we have adopted is based on using a visualization tool that can engage both learners and instructors in an active learning approach to construct a map for the knowledge, concepts, and skills that a learner possesses and those that he/she acquires during each course of the computer engineering curriculum. We present our design for such a tool that is currently under development.