The interactive computer graphics book: an interactive exploration environment for facilitating the development of visualization skills

Abstract

This report discusses an environment that may be able to facilitate the development of computer graphics students' visualization skills. The ability to visualize an image synthesized using a particular graphics technique is a skill needed in teaching and learning computer graphics. This skill has traditionally been developed inefficiently, using static, two-dimensional figures of synthesized images. A method that may be more effective may be to allow the teacher or student to change the values of the parameters upon which the image is based, and to see the new image immediately. This approach to interacting with figures is integrated with textual material through a book metaphor. The key aspect of this approach is that the student can explore and immediately see the effects of altering the values of various parameters.