Digital content can be accessed via the Web, or using the VUE’s “Resources”� panel to tap into digital repositories, FTP servers and local file systems. As the availability of digital information continues to increase, VUE sets itself apart as a flexible tool to help faculty and students integrate, organize and contextualize electronic content in their work. Numerous tools currently exist for locating digital information, but few applications are available for making sense of the information available to us. VUE provides a concept mapping interface, which can be used as such, or as an interface to organize digital content in non-linear ways. In fact, the benefits of concept mapping as a learning tool have been documented by over 40 years of cognitive science research.
Using a simple set of tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, faculty and students can map relationships between concepts, ideas and digital content.Ĭoncept mapping is not new to the educational field. Organize and contextualize teaching and learningĪt its core, the Visual Understanding Environment ( VUE) is a concept and content mapping application, developed to support teaching, learning and research and for anyone who needs to organize, contextualize, and access digital information.
