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Visual cognitive tools (VCTs) are external mental aids that maintain and display visual representations (VRs) of information (i.e., structures, objects, concepts, ideas, and problems). VCTs allow learners to operate upon the VRs to perform epistemic (i.e., reasoning and knowledge-based) activities. In VCTs, the mechanism by which learners operate upon the VRs to reason and learn is interaction. Frameworks play an important role in how interactive tools are analyzed and designed. As such, this article presents a framework (A2C2) that characterizes the macro-level categories of VCTs according to the manner in which learner-information interaction takes place in these tools. The A2C2 framework divides the analysis and design space of VCTs into four categories: access-based, annotation-based, construction-based, and combination-based. Each category represents an overall structure within which learners operate upon information. Different existing VCTs are used as examples to demonstrate the application and utility of the framework.
Frameworks are crucial for the analysis and design of tools. As an ever greater number of visual cognitive tools (VCTs) are being designed, it is important to have frameworks to help with the description, analysis, and design of these tools. Currently, there does not exist a framework to describe how learners can interact with information in these tools. The purpose of this article is to create such a framework. Specifically, this article presents characterizations of various VCTs according to the macroscopic operations by which learners interact with information in these tools, where these overall macroscopic learner-information interaction operations are referred to as macro-level categories. This article is not concerned with providing designers with guidelines for how and when to use these categories. Rather, its goal is the development of a descriptive framework, one which provides a systematic and organized conceptual structure for thinking about design and a common language to communicate and substantiate design choices and decisions.
The theory of distributed cognition proposes that human cognitive processes rarely work in isolation, and that external cognitive aids and artifacts, such as displayed information and tools, can greatly influence thinking and learning processes (Norman, 1993; Salomon, 1993; Zhang & Norman, 1994; Hutchins, 1995; Zhang, 1997). External artifacts can support, enhance, guide, canalize, constrain, offload, augment, and transform mental processes and activities. A category of such external artifacts are interactive cognitive tools...