Mapping the curriculum: Online project helps visualize interdisciplinary relationships

by Lev Nelson '04

Imagine yourself a freshman at Brown. You're fascinated by vision and want to study it in depth - possibly even design an independent concentration around it. Where do you begin? Biology? Psychology? Neuroscience? Cognitive science?

"In the Course Announcement Bulletin, it's unclear how you would find out about vision," says David Targan, associate dean of the College for the sciences. "You might have no idea that there are multiple people in multiple parts of the University that work on vision unless you could see it all at once."

In the future, this may be less of a problem for Brown students, thanks to the CRISTALS project. Started in 2002 by Targan and two colleagues, CRISTALS - Context-Rich Interactive Student Teaching and Learning System - is an attempt to find better ways to visualize a complex system like a university so that people can explore it in new ways.

"The links between content are as important as the content itself, and they are generally neglected, especially in a university with its hierarchical order of knowledge," says David Cutts, CRISTALS' second parent, professor of physics and currently chair of the department. "The horizontal links are forgotten or not available. Having them is enriching. We want to create a framework that everyone can use to bring academic areas together: link researchers, allow students to see the full sweep of Brown's curriculum, its teaching and research activities."

Advances in human knowledge have always been accompanied by changes in how it has been stored and organized. Cuneiform and hieroglyphics gave way to handwriting on paper, which was in turn displaced by the printing press; the recent development of the Internet has introduced hypertext. As we shift into a "digital culture of knowledge," as Professor of Geology Thomson Webb III calls it, the challenge is to find new ways of displaying information that allow us to understand and synthesize it better.

Webb is the third member of the CRISTALS lead team. Two years ago, they received a "proof of concept" grant from the National Science Foundation to test their idea. They began building a Web site to help students explore connections between Brown courses in physics, astronomy and geology. After the first year, however, they realized they could accomplish far more by focusing mainly on developing a new framework that emphasizes linkages, leaving others to contribute content.

Their overarching goal is to "make [concepts] easily accessible from a variety of points of view ... to cross disciplinary boundaries and do that in a seamless way," says Targan, who is also an adjunct associate professor of physics. He believes that the boundaries between departments are often arbitrary and hopes that "students will worry less about which department knowledge is in and focus on the knowledge itself." Rosemary Simpson, who works for Vice President of Research Andy van Dam and has been involved with CRISTALS since last year, describes the process using the hypertext term "intertwingling."

The project received a huge boost three months ago with the acquisition of software from a company called Thinkmap, according to Simpson. She emphasizes, though, that although the software was enormously helpful, "the visualization is secondary to the process. ... It's not just a user interface or a database; it's a way of representing, accessing and using information that is user-centered."

The Thinkmap display looks like something out of a science fiction movie - a map of hyperspace routes, perhaps, or an alien computer system. It presents information in visual form, with related concepts radiating from a common center and linking to each other. The resulting web allows one to see how different pieces of a system - in this case, Brown - connect. With a click and drag of the mouse, a user can zoom in or out, rotate the web, and recenter on a topic of interest. A sidebar shows more detailed information - for instance, if a professor's name is a "concept," the sidebar will show research interests and contact information.

Targan explains that a static site is limited because it represents data in only one way. Different views may work better for different people, and Thinkmap allows each user to organize the data independently. Thinkmap "gives students an opportunity to explore on their own time, in their own way," he says. The new capabilities are also important to keep pace with the accelerating Information Age. Says Simpson, "Knowledge, today, is not static. It's constantly changing. You need a way of representing that dynamism."

One example of how CRISTALS will be useful is a new version of the Brown Online Course Announcement (BOCA). Mark Howison '06, a math concentrator who has been working on CRISTALS, says this will allow "students to more meaningfully browse [BOCA]; the Web version is not much different than the paper version right now. It might make people realize there's a class they could take that they wouldn't have found in the course catalog." Webb believes that it will "make prerequisites real, instead of these abstract things." Targan adds that it will have many applications as an advising tool.

But more than just conveying information efficiently, the goal of CRISTALS is to change the way people interact with the data - from "seeking" to "browsing," says Targan. Once someone enters the Thinkmap system, he or she may get sidetracked and discover something new. In Webb's words, it's "a little bit like the experience you used to have in a library, where you go in looking for one book and another catches your eye. You find yourself exploring."

What does the future hold? The original grant ran out last June, and the team may seek a larger NSF grant to develop the idea. They have received a Wayland Colleguim Study Group Grant for 2004-05, which will allow them to involve more faculty in the project. Eventually, they would like to have CRISTALS model the entire University - linking every class, every professor, every research project. Says Cutts, "Our dream is that if we make [the] tools ... it will grow by itself."

Other members of the CRISTALS team include cognitive science Professor Steven Sloman, Jerrod O'Connor from the Dean of the College's office, and undergraduates Daniel Dadush, Cyril Saint Girons and Zeke Swepson.