GTT - Graphics Teaching Tool

Computer graphics is a highly technical discipline that has become an integral part of countless areas of academia and industry. Just as basic grammar skills underlie writing in all fields and basic math skills underlie virtually all the sciences, so an understanding of computer graphics fundamentals is becoming a basic visual literacy requirement for a wide range of tasks in IT-based jobs and beyond, from graphics and industrial design to engineering and business. Today's graphics teaching tools do not adequately address this graphics literacy need: tutorials available for professional graphics packages present the how but not the why. Algorithm visualizations and mathematical tools useful to CS majors are too technical for most other students.

The Graphics Teaching Tool (GTT) is a Java-based product designed to address the need for graphics concepts literacy by offering a pedagogically driven environment for non-CS majors in courses from business to multimedia to Web design. The design of the GTT is being guided by research in the learning sciences, specifically research on students' mental models and the classroom use of constructivist educational technology. The GTT offers a hands-on interactive tool for explicitly teaching underlying computer graphics concepts to a non-CS-major audience. It thus has the potential to enhance to an unprecedented degree the understanding of graphics fundamentals among the next-generation of IT workforce.

Project status: Active

Project Home Page: http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/research/gtt/home.html