Through The Looking Glass: Insights Into Visualization Pedagogy Through Sentiment Analysis Of Peer Review Text

Peer review is a widely utilized feedback mechanism for engaging students. As a pedagogical method, it has been shown to improve educational outcomes, but we have found limited empirical measurement of peer review in visualization courses. In addition to increasing engagement, peer review provides diverse feedback and reinforces recently-learned course concepts through critical evaluation of others’ work. We discuss the construction and application of peer review in two visualization courses from different colleges at the University of South Florida. We then analyze student projects and peer review text via sentiment analysis to infer insights for visualization educators, including the focus of course content, engagement across student groups, student mastery of concepts, course trends over time, and expert intervention effectiveness. Finally, we provide suggestions for adapting peer review to other visualization courses to engage students and increase instructor understanding of the peer review process.

Zachariah Beasley, Alon Friedman, and Paul Rosen. Through The Looking Glass: Insights Into Visualization Pedagogy Through Sentiment Analysis Of Peer Review Text. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A) Special Issue on Visualization Education and Teaching Visualization Literacy, 2021.

@article{beasley2021through,
  title = {Through the Looking Glass: Insights into Visualization Pedagogy through
    Sentiment Analysis of Peer Review Text},
  author = {Beasley, Zachariah and Friedman, Alon and Rosen, Paul},
  journal = {IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A) Special Issue on
    Visualization Education and Teaching Visualization Literacy},
  volume = {41},
  pages = {59--70},
  year = {2021},
  note = {textit{Presented at IEEE VIS 2022.}},
  abstract = {Peer review is a widely utilized feedback mechanism for engaging students.
    As a pedagogical method, it has been shown to improve educational outcomes, but we have
    found limited empirical measurement of peer review in visualization courses. In addition
    to increasing engagement, peer review provides diverse feedback and reinforces
    recently-learned course concepts through critical evaluation of others' work. We discuss
    the construction and application of peer review in two visualization courses from
    different colleges at the University of South Florida. We then analyze student projects
    and peer review text via sentiment analysis to infer insights for visualization
    educators, including the focus of course content, engagement across student groups,
    student mastery of concepts, course trends over time, and expert intervention
    effectiveness. Finally, we provide suggestions for adapting peer review to other
    visualization courses to engage students and increase instructor understanding of the
    peer review process.}
}