Cognitive Research

Point of View

Point of view (including viewing azimuth and viewing angle and varying along a continuum from nadir to dramatically oblique) is crucial to learning with geographical visualizations. If students cannot mentally transform their familiar eye-level view of objects around them to a top-down view, or mentally rotate images with the typical north-up orientation of maps, then geographical representations will hold limited meaning for them. Of central concern is how visualization tools that display the transformation in point of view, for example flowing from an eye-level view to a top-down view can help students adopt alternate points-of-view about the referent space?

Findings: Students tend to prefer orienting images with a conventional "north-up" perspective. While this supports direct correlation of images with maps, "north-up" isn't always the best orientation for exploring features in images or speculating about explanations for environmental events. This is especially true in oblique views, typical of shuttle astronaut's photos. Oblique views, in contrast to nadir views, offer students more information about what is actually contained in the referent space.