The latest indicators from the Data Never Sleeps project shows that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day?* Yet, despite information and data being everywhere, not everyone understands what it means.

Cecilie Hansen, a Researcher at UiB’s Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology (SLATE) partner NORCE, believes that making sense of all the data requires that a person understands what’s happening in the data, why it’s particularly important, and most critically, is able to see the insights and patterns that they wouldn’t see without that particular visualization. In fact, being able to “think with data visualizations” has become one of the most critical skills for our next generation of learners.

This is why Hansen finds it so important to carefully design and integrate visualizations, dashboards, and learning analytics into workforce training models.  In her latest project iComPAss, she and her colleagues at SLATE are working on supporting the design of educational training for firefighters based on real-life problems that they face regularly.

“For Fire and Rescue Services in Norway, getting the visualizations just right for the workplace becomes paramount.” says Hansen.  It is crucial that they are able to quickly see multiple views of the data in order to make informed decisions about their organization as a whole, impact of their training programs, or even be able to examine one individual firefighter’s learning pathway and competency level on an as-needed basis.”

Accordingly, the tools that Fire and Rescue Services need are designed to make their decision-making easier, and enable them to assess and identify any firefighter’s knowledge gaps before any issues arise. Hansen has learned that when you have the right data explained within a visualization, training is more engaging because it begins to tells a story for the learner or reader; making understanding and decision-making more readily available.

In this web visualization, each color represents a person’s self-evaluation of a skill, towards a specific firerescue training situation.

For more information on Cecilie Hansen and the iComPAss project:

https://www.domo.com/learn/data-never-sleeps-5?aid=ogsm072517_1&sf100871281=1