Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics

and Training Organization

Olena M. Mikhailutsa

1 a

, Tatiana O. Melikhova

1 b

, Andriy V. Pozhuyev

1 c

and

Hennadiy M. Kravtsov

2 d

Zaporizhzhia National University, 66 Zhukovskoho Str., Zaporizhzhiam 69600, Ukraine

Kherson State University, 27 Universytetska Str., Kherson, 73003, Ukraine

Keywords:

Visualization System, Interactive Teaching Method, Ant Colony Method.

Abstract:

The paper analyzes the beneﬁts of using interactive teaching methods for students of technical and economic

specialties using visualization as an example. In the analysis of existing innovative educational methods, at-

tention is focused on the use of information technology in the formation of competencies of future specialists.

In the process of building a software product, a comparative analysis of platforms for developing graphic

applications as the main means of visualization on the Internet was carried out. To solve logistic problems

that are of practical importance for both economic and technical areas, a visualization of the ant colony op-

timization algorithm is implemented. It includes building a graph, simulating dynamic network visualization

the movement of a large number of ants, saving and loading the graph, providing the user with the ability

to remove visible layers. To test the effectiveness of this approach, a multistage experiment was conducted,

the results of which allowed us to draw a number of positive ﬁndings. In addition, the comparative survey

of students from the experimental and control groups made it possible to ﬁnd out the students’ needs in the

process of dual learning, which provided an opportunity to increase students’ satisfaction with the quality of

teaching disciplines.

1 INTRODUCTION

Freight and road haulage by region is part of the trans-

port system of the Ukrainian economy, which every

year increases its turnover for the carriage of goods

and passengers, as well as overcoming a greater dis-

tance of transport. At this time, it is important for

enterprises not only to release products and provide

transportation services, but also to have their own

markets for products. Passengers also prefer to travel

by passenger vehicles, which allows them to quickly

resolve work issues, sign contracts without being tied

to purchased tickets for railway transport. This al-

lows you to quickly resolve business issues, since you

do not have to waste time waiting for the departure

time of the transport. Road transport provides mobil-

ity, which is very important for business. Carrying

out cargo transportation, it is necessary to fulﬁll the

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2935-7997

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9934-8722

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4083-5139

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3680-2286

conditions of the signed contracts, deliver products to

the warehouses of buyers, drive through the branches

of the enterprise with an inspection, personally visit

the counterparties-consumers of products. For the

purpose of marketing products, large enterprises have

sales or delivery departments, and small enterprises

or entrepreneurs turn to transport enterprises, since

they do not have their own ﬂeet of all types of trans-

port. Recently, due to the rise in fuel prices, a topical

issue is the construction of an optimal route for the

delivery of goods. A very important aspect in deliv-

ery is its cost, which depends on building a logisti-

cally correct route. This allows you to signiﬁcantly

reduce shipping costs for delivery. At the enterprise,

the logistician builds a route in such a way as to ﬁll

the car with cargo as much as possible, consistently

distribute the cargo to delivery points depending on

the chosen direction of movement. The logistician

selects the brand of the car corresponding to the re-

quirements and volume of the cargo. The existing car

park at the enterprise should not be idle, therefore, if

there is a shortage of cars, it is necessary to contact

transport companies, and if the cars are underutilized,

360

Mikhailutsa, O., Melikhova, T., Pozhuyev, A. and Kravtsov, H.

Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics and Training Organization.

DOI: 10.5220/0010931800003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 360-371

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

offer delivery services. Before delivering the goods, it

is economically feasible for an economist to calculate

the cost of delivery of the goods in order to correctly

form the price of the service for acceptance.

At enterprises there is a shortage of qualiﬁed per-

sonnel of the younger generation, therefore, an im-

portant issue in teaching students is to consider prac-

tical problems, work with computer programs that are

found at the enterprise. Now enterprises turn to the

university with practical cases to attract students and

interest the best of them for further work at the en-

terprise. For example, Metinvest holds a case cham-

pionship with students to get a new perspective on

their existing problems, as graduate students have

new knowledge and skills to work in modern pro-

grams.

At the current stage of development of higher ed-

ucation, approaches to accreditation of higher edu-

cation institutions in Ukraine have been harmonized

with those that are used in European practice. Train-

ing of Ukrainian National Accreditation experts of ed-

ucational programs is carried out by the British Coun-

cil Ukraine company. The “Regulation on the ac-

creditation of educational programs for the prepara-

tion of applicants for higher education”, which de-

ﬁnes the criteria for assessing the quality of each ed-

ucational program, was approved. According to the

criterion “Learning and teaching in the educational

program”, it is determined that the forms and meth-

ods of learning and teaching should contribute to the

achievement of the programmed outcomes stated in

the educational program. According to the “Stan-

dards and guidelines for quality assurance in the Eu-

ropean Higher Education Area (ESG)”, the quality

of higher education should be improved by develop-

ing the capacity of teachers at Ukrainian universities

to implement a student-centered approach in the pro-

jecting and implementation of educational programs.

Student-centered learning includes teaching methods

that shift the focus of education from the teacher to

the student, and among the principles of which are re-

search, discussions and project works.

According to available statistics from the Head-

hunter International Personnel Portal about stafﬁng

with engineers, designers and technologists, there is

an acute shortage of qualiﬁed specialists at all stages

of the industrial product life cycle reproduction. This

situation is caused, on the one hand, by the fact that

the average age of highly qualiﬁed specialists is 40–

45 years and above, and on the other, by the gap that

has arisen between the requirements of employers for

staff competencies and educational standards. Thus,

the technological modernization of our country is not

feasible without the development and improvement of

engineering and economic education, which should

be based on the best traditions of the national scien-

tiﬁc school with the involvement of modern European

developments.

The ongoing changes in the economy and educa-

tion make new demands on the training of specialists

in the ﬁeld of logistics, adjusting curricula and train-

ing courses. In logistics, there is a dynamic transi-

tion from a theoretical understanding of the content,

as the management of the transportation of goods and

people, to an emphasis on the information and tech-

nical aspects of practical work. Currently, the study

of special computer packages is being introduced into

the training program for both economists who plan to

work in logistics and programmers who need to be

able to complete the technical modules necessary for

managers to improve the efﬁciency of the enterprise.

Analyzing the above-mentioned, it can be claimed

that there is an urgent need to form creative think-

ing among students thus increasing their creative po-

tential. One of the ways to stimulate creativity and

self-development is to elaborate innovative methods

thereby increasing the motivation of students to mas-

ter subjects in both engineering and economic spe-

cialties, as well as improve the quality of higher ed-

ucation specialists in general. Personnel trained in

modern techniques will work in sales and logistics

departments at industrial and transport enterprises to

improve the efﬁciency of work and improve the trans-

port system of the Ukrainian economy as a whole.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The list of key tasks and a description of the global

problem considered in this paper are based on a re-

view and analysis of publications. Speaking of visu-

alization in general, its application for strategic plan-

ning by studying the use of interactive visual repre-

sentations in real time in business strategy process,

and the role of visualization in assessing and trans-

ferring risks are analyzed in Eppler and Aeschimann;

Eppler and Platts (Eppler and Aeschimann, 2009; Ep-

pler and Platts, 2009). Ivanova et al. (Ivanova et al.,

2020), Kiv et al. (Kiv et al., 2020), Mazorchuk et al.

(Mazorchuk et al., 2020), Osinska and Osinski (Os-

inska and Osinski, 2018), Soloviev et al. (Soloviev

et al., 2020), Vasylenko et al. (Vasylenko et al., 2019)

studied the use of information visualization in the so-

cial and human sciences, while covering a wide range

of topics, including analysis of social networks, com-

plex systems, as well as issues of visualization aes-

thetics.

The research experience gives a real opportunity

Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics and Training Organization

361

to generalize and systematize ideas about teaching

methods and technologies. In (Fırat and Laramee,

2018) visualizations of pedagogical research work

are analyzed and classiﬁed, determining the direc-

tions of open research subjects in an interactive visual

representation for education, which demonstrate the

impact of visualization methods on advanced train-

ing. The demonstration of visualization possibilities

in computer science and mathematics (Klerkx et al.,

2014) emphasizes the effectiveness of its use to im-

prove various types of activities in the educational

process.

Emphasizing the fact that modern educational

space consists of two types of pedagogical pro-

cesses – innovative and traditional, Panina (Panina,

2014) identiﬁed the differences between traditional

and innovative schools at the level of educational

technology. Attention is paid to the description and

systematization of the most popular and frequently

used innovative educational methods of teaching in

higher education. According to (Kazhan et al., 2020;

Malchenko et al., 2020; Mukhametzhanova et al.,

2016; Okopna et al., 2020) the effective use of inter-

active teaching methods will allow the preparation of

qualiﬁed, competitive, educated and intellectually de-

veloped specialists. In the presented classiﬁcation of

interactive methods, the case-study method is sepa-

rately highlighted; it allows students to take the initia-

tive in mastering theoretical positions and mastering

practical skills.

Focusing on the process of developing educational

visualization, Hauswirth (Hauswirth, 2012) promotes

the development of pedagogical methods and tools

that allow students to learn while creating visualiza-

tions on their own. It is well known that socioeco-

nomic changes and information development of the

entire world community require the use of informa-

tion technology in the formation of the competencies

of future specialists. By putting more emphasis on the

development of algorithmic thinking, the didactic po-

tential for the use of algorithms visualization systems

in the process of teaching programming was consid-

ered by Moglan (Moglan, 2019). The methods of us-

ing the created instrumental environment, that is the

algorithms of visualizer within the educational pro-

cess are proposed. However, it should be noted that

the implemented visualizers allow you to interactively

demonstrate the operation of the algorithms only for

processing static structures. The proposed approach

can’t be applied for the presentation of more complex

data structures. The created visualization system is a

catalog of implemented visualizations for a ﬁxed al-

gorithm suite without the possibility of adding a new

algorithm to a catalog by a third party user.

Analyzing the techniques of visualization of al-

gorithms in order to create an electronic encyclope-

dia of graphs algorithms, Gordeev (Gordeev, 2018)

considered examples of systems for visualizing them.

The advantages of an event-oriented approach and a

data-oriented approach and their change are analyzed.

The given examples of existing visual techniques for

describing the graph algorithm behaviour are con-

sidered from the standpoint of having the ability to

specify parameter graphs by the user, the ability to

specify parameter algorithms, and the ability to adjust

the visual part of the image. A comparative descrip-

tion of existing software products for graph analysis

is presented in detail in (Kolomeychenko and Chep-

ovskiy, 2014). The authors presented a software pack-

age for the analysis and visualization of large graphs.

The cross-platform nature of the used implementation

tools and the ability of the developed software com-

plex to function in various operating systems allows it

to be used in the tasks of sociological and marketing

analysis.

The popularity of effective “swarm intelligence”

methods explains the constant appearance of a mod-

iﬁcation of the ant colony method to solve various

applied problems. Panteleyev and Alyoshina (Pan-

teleyev and Alyoshina, 2008) proposed an algorithm

for solving the shortest path search problem on an ori-

ented graph using the ant colony method. The corre-

sponding software is presented, the performance of

which is demonstrated by a speciﬁc example. How-

ever, the authors have not sufﬁciently studied the

question of the convergence of the method, in partic-

ular, the speed of its convergence.

The analysis of these works allows us to conclude

that for most visualization systems the introduction

of a new algorithm requires the development of the

whole visualization system from scratch. In light of

the fact that the use of automated systems in the trans-

port logistics branch is one of the ways to save re-

sources, even with a large number of ant algorithms

already implemented, it is necessary to further imple-

ment and improve these algorithms to ﬁnd the best

results.

Many works are devoted to the transport logis-

tics issues (Pavlenko et al., 2020; Aulin et al., 2020).

Thus, Bowersox et al. (Bowersox et al., 2019) de-

scribes the role and content of logistics in modern

business, as well as examines in detail two fundamen-

tal tasks facing managers: developing an appropriate

logistics structure and overall management of logis-

tics activities. Stock and Lambert (Stock and Lam-

bert, 2001) focuses on the marketing orientation, and

subject matter is reviewed in terms of customer satis-

faction. Emphasizing the marketing aspects of logis-

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

362

tics, the authors combine all functional business areas,

and also include logistics in supply chain manage-

ment. The compendium (Zijm et al., 2015) presents

the latest developments in logistics theory in various

ﬁelds, as well as case studies. It contains a collection

of theoretical topics, practical cases, case studies and

project reports. The emphasis is made on knowledge

transfer from research to business practices in logis-

tics.

The relevance of the work presented is attributable

to the fact that the proposed software product has mul-

tidisciplinary scientiﬁc and applied aspects: from its

research-oriented nature to practical implementation

both in the educational process and in the practical

activities of industrial and commercial enterprises.

3 MATERIALS AND METHODS

Nowadays higher education institutions are unique

in that economists are taught engineering specialties,

and future engineers can choose any economic dis-

cipline. Some students seek to obtain knowledge of

both economic and technical areas at the same time,

and while studying in two specialties in parallel, they

also use the right to choose their individual learn-

ing path. In an engineering institute of Zaporizhzhia

National University, teachers and students of differ-

ent technical and economic specialties work together

on the same scientiﬁc or educational issue, which al-

lows them to expand their horizons, exchange teach-

ing methods and introduce modern ways in teach-

ing their disciplines. This enriches the knowledge of

students of both specialties and improves the quality

of education, which subsequently provides them with

the opportunity to receive a prestigious profession.

The issue of teaching methods is essentially a

question of how to make close contact between the

student and the teacher. It is effective to use visualiza-

tion with various teaching methods as a means of tran-

sition from a passive perception of educational mate-

rial to an active and conscious acquiring of knowl-

edge. In this way, it is easier to comprehend the

essence of the technical problem under considera-

tion and the importance of the technical activity per-

formed, as well as to evaluate the optimality and rea-

sonability of the technical solution.

The daily use of algorithms allows humanity to

make life easier due to the speed and optimization

of tasks. In the 21st century, during the scientiﬁc

and technological revolution, the use of various al-

gorithms increases almost exponentially, optimizing

most production processes. In most cases, it is enough

to slightly modify the existing algorithm and apply it

in another area in order to signiﬁcantly increase the

beneﬁts of its application. If to highlight the visual-

ization of the ant algorithm (Dorigo, 1992), it would

like to emphasize its alternative way in explaining

the decision-making theory to engineering students;

it also allows economists involved in transport logis-

tics issues to better understand the material.

3.1 Survey of Visualization

Technologies

The global network is increasingly becoming the

main platform for data reproducing (visualization).

This applies in particular to interactive data visual-

ization, which allows users to manipulate their data

and graphics in real time. Although this move into

the Internet opens up many opportunities for global

visualization, it is also accompanied by its own set

of problems. For example, how to reproduce large

amounts of data in a web browser? To understand the

problems of visualization, several types of web ani-

mation development were analyzed. The most widely

used technologies in this direction are SVG, HTML,

Canvas and WebGL (Frain, 2020). The term SVG

means “Scalable Vector Graphics”. It is an XML-

based format for drawing vector images. SVG offers

certain beneﬁts as a data visualization tool, in partic-

ular ease of comprehension, since it consists of stan-

dard primitives such as rectangles, circles and lines.

Due to the simplicity of its use and integration with

HTML standards, this format is the most common op-

tion for graphics on the Internet. However, despite

this, SVG has one major drawback – scaling the num-

ber of nodes.

The main advantage of Canvas technology is that

since it creates bitmaps, it does not have a trace of

memory that SVG has with its nodes. Thanks to this,

we can easily draw thousands of data points using

Canvas. On the other hand, Canvas is like a black

box, because after it has been displayed on the screen,

all we have is an image. Separately, it is worth men-

tioning the fact that the usage of interactivity requires

much more complex solutions, however, it can pro-

cess data animation much more efﬁciently than SVG.

Canvas is a good option when you create a visual-

ization that provides more data points than the SVG

could handle.

The advantage of WebGL is its productivity, in

which 3D graphics, millions of data and animations

can be displayed smoothly (Cantor and Jones, 2012).

The downside is complexity because WebGL is the

hardest of the work options, mainly due to the low

work level (Shepiliev et al., 2020). Most of the visu-

alizations you crave to do on the Internet can be done

Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics and Training Organization

363

without the power of WebGL. However, if you are

trying to visually represent hundreds of thousands of

points, quickly animate thousands of points, or create

complex graphics that include 3D perspective com-

puting, WebGL will be almost indispensable.

3.2 Ant Approach to Solving Problems

The ant algorithm models a multi-agent system whose

agents are called ants (Blum, 2005). The ant approach

is based on three components: a list of nodes passed,

called the ant memory (tabu list); visibility, the value

reciprocal of the distance between points; and the vir-

tual pheromone trail on the rib. The implementation

of this algorithm is based on an approach in which the

probability of an ant choosing a speciﬁc route at each

step is determined by the relation (Shtovba, 2005):

(t) =

(t)

∗ N

∑

(t)

∗ N

)

(1)

where F

(t) is the number of pheromones on this

route, N

(t) is the length of the i j-th route, α and β

are two adjustable parameters that specify the weight

of the pheromone trail and visibility when choosing a

route. When α = 0, the nearest city will be selected,

which corresponds to the greedy algorithm in the clas-

sical theory of optimization. If β = 0, then only

pheromone ampliﬁcation works, which entails the

rapid degeneration of routes to one suboptimal solu-

tion. The new pheromone value pheromone F(t + 1)

on the path i j is calculated through the old F(t) taking

into account the pheromone evaporation coefﬁcient

b (Hauswirth, 2012): F

(t + 1) = b ∗ F

(t) + ∆F

(t),

∆F

(t) =

, where Q is an adjustable parameter, the

value of which is chosen of the same order with the

length of the optimal route (pheromone value), and

is the length of the path between the start and end

points.

3.3 Software Design

The developed software design consists of: a conﬁg-

uration ﬁle in which all application parameters are

set (dimensions, grid colors, etc.); controllers work-

ing with the Main-Class(Grid, AntCanvas); systems;

auxiliary scripts; the basic Main ﬁle working with

HTML.

The visualization process works on a large number

of ants (agents) and has the ability to change the num-

ber of these agents. Moreover, the system supports a

frequency of 60 frames per second for a large (over

2 thousand) number of agents. The presented soft-

ware product provides the user with functions that are

accessible from the user interface, such as: building

routes on the grid; storage / loading of routes; launch

of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm and some

of its modiﬁcations to the search on the grid; compar-

ison of the results of various modiﬁcations of the al-

gorithm in time and processor load; storage of reports

and screenshots of algorithm.

In view of the fact that the main practical appli-

cation of the presented method (application) is to ﬁnd

the shortest way for transporting or delivering an In-

ternet package on the network, the user should be

given the opportunity to reﬂect the algorithm on the

graph. Since the graph is a combination of arcs and

vertices, the basis for the graph is a ﬁxed grid of ver-

tices, and the user, to simplify the work with the ap-

plication, will be able to build any graph by connect-

ing these vertices arbitrarily. Limiting the user with a

ﬁxed grid, we lose the ability to make the graph ﬂex-

ible, but it provides an opportunity to make a visual

analysis of the path length without software process-

ing all possible connection options, since it will be

more convenient for the user to determine the distance

in a ﬁxed grid.

Considering the analysis of all the possibilities of

implementing animations in web applications and the

fact that the grid is limited by the user’s screen, SVG

was chosen as the optimal technology. The applica-

tion is resistant to actions that are not foreseen by the

main functionality, and informs the user of a found er-

ror in a particular place and in a particular modiﬁca-

tion. The application architecture is as ﬂexible as pos-

sible, which in the future gives developers the oppor-

tunity to create modiﬁcations to already implemented

algorithms without wasting time on visualization.

3.4 Capacity Assessment of the

Developed System

The designed application corresponds to the proto-

types in design and functionality. The ability to con-

trol other parameters of the algorithm was addition-

ally added. They are: the number of pheromones,

evaporation, alpha and beta values (1), as well as the

ability to hide the visual parts of the algorithm, if they

are not needed. This can signiﬁcantly speed up the

program, especially if the user hides the drawing layer

of ants. An example of the interface of the constructed

program is shown in ﬁgure 1.

The constructed graph is designed so that the task

for the ACO algorithm is not trivial. Figure 2 shows

the optimal and two suboptimal solutions to the prob-

lem. Based on the approach proposed by Dorigo and

utzle (Dorigo and St

utzle, 2004), a modiﬁcation of

the obtained ACO algorithm is implemented. The re-

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

364

Figure 1: Example of routing task.

sults obtained make it possible to judge the optimal

choice of parameters when solving the traveling sales-

man problem with various initial data.

In ﬁgure 3 presents the process of ﬁnding the opti-

mal solution to the logistic problem. The created web

application helps users better understand the ant algo-

rithm.

Under the present study, a comparative analysis of

the application operation and analogue program Sim-

ple ACO JavaFx was carried out. To optimize the

developed application, passive evaporation was re-

placed by active one. Such a solution changes the

evaporation system from linear to exponential, and

pheromone values do not accumulate very quickly, as

in a similar program. The results obtained showed

that active evaporation is really more effective than

passive evaporation; however, in this case, ants be-

gan to choose the lower (blue) route more often. It

is worth noting that this route has one anomaly –

it has the shortest arcs to the start and end points.

Thus, it becomes clear that on this short route, ants re-

lease more pheromones, which makes the lower route

more attractive. To address this problem, a dual strat-

egy was applied to the determination of pheromones.

Other than providing a local value, an ant will now

remember the total distance covered, and on return-

ing to the starting point, additional pheromone values

will be determined by this distance. A comparative

analysis of the above solutions is presented in the ta-

ble 1. The resulting solution is effective in the use of

large-scale graphs. The analysis was performed with

the same value of ants (1000) and their speed. The

comparative analysis of algorithms by value of the re-

sources used in Windows Task Manager is presented

in ﬁgure 4. The built application consumes 85% at the

beginning and then 42% of CPU load, but a similar

one consumes 100% at the beginning, and loses a lot

in FPS value, and then 51%. Also, a similar program

is much worse than the new one in terms of graph-

ics resources: 18% vs 47%. Therefore, the developed

solution is optimal from the viewpoint of system re-

sources use and correctness of classical ant algorithms

work.

4 RESULTS

The logistics system of an enterprise can be viewed

from two sides. Its ﬁrst important element is the efﬁ-

ciency of the interconnection of the transport system

for the delivery of products built at the enterprise. On

the other hand, a software product is of particular im-

portance, using which you can train personnel both

at the enterprise and implement it in the educational

process.

The course “Transport logistics” is an integral part

of the training of highly qualiﬁed specialists, both

technical and economic specialties. Previously, this

subject was taught according to the standard curricu-

lum.Today, there are rapid changes in the existing

operating conditions of transport companies, so en-

terprises need specialists who meet the existing high

requirements. For this, it is necessary to introduce

new practical methods into the teaching methodol-

ogy of this discipline, which will strengthen theo-

retical knowledge with practical experience. Since

Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics and Training Organization

365

Figure 2: Solution of the routing problem. Red and blue are suboptimal solutions, green is an optimal solution.

Figure 3: Visualization of the solution of a logistic problem.

Table 1: Relative amount of route selection by different programs based on 100 iterations.

Upper route Optimal route Lower route Other

Built application 7% 71% 18% 4%

Built application after modiﬁcation 7% 80% 9% 4%

Simple ACO JavaFx 11% 61% 13% 15%

in our time computerization covers all areas, it be-

comes necessary to strengthen practical training with

the help of modern computer programs.Cooperation

with employers in mastering the competencies of to-

day’s students ensures, with the help of our profes-

sionals, an increase in the efﬁciency of the enterprises

of the Ukrainian economy as a whole.

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

366

Figure 4: Use of computer resources for the built application.

4.1 Methodical Experiment

A methodical experiment, conducted even under ar-

tiﬁcially created conditions, is always a training one.

The experimental work was carried out on the basis of

the engineering institute of the Zaporizhzhia National

University. The students of the technical (software

engineering) and economic (accounting and taxation)

specialties participated in the experiment. At the be-

ginning, the testing was used to study and obtain feed-

back from stakeholders. Using special survey forms

for testing, the desired changes of deﬁnite courses in

the educational program in order to improve the qual-

ity of education were determined.

The survey highlights the need for taking into ac-

count the wishes of both employers and students, and

also indicates the interest of all participants of the

educational process in obtaining relevant competen-

cies, a high level of knowledge and skills based on

the learning outcomes. The analysis of survey forms

showed that a free choice of disciplines is provided

for building an individual educational trajectory for

100% of students. However, a survey of students

revealed their desire to change the work program,

namely: 30% of students feel the need to increase the

number of practical examples, 50% of students want

to solve speciﬁc tasks, that employers face, in prac-

tical classes, 20% of students want to try more other

teaching methods in the lessons, 40% of students be-

lieve that the material will be better comprehended if

during the lessons visualization of teaching methods

is used.

After studying the ﬁrst module by students of the

indicated specialties of the corresponding educational

programs in the framework of the studied disciplines,

namely, “Mathematical Methods of Operations Re-

search” and “Economic and mathematical modeling”,

the results of a student survey were taken into account

and changes were made to the structure of the disci-

pline and its teaching methods.

For the reliability and purity of the experiment,

the students were divided into two groups – the con-

trol and the experimental. At the second stage, a for-

mative experiment was conducted. It made it possi-

ble to identify the pedagogical conditions for the bet-

ter possibility of solving creative tasks that integrate

the knowledge of various disciplines. In the control

group, classes in the developed elective course were

not conducted and students’ desire to solve creative

tasks was formed spontaneously. In the experimental

group, teaching of the orientation elective course was

carried out to form a willingness to solve speciﬁc cre-

ative tasks arising from employers. Within the frame-

work of the created complex of didactic support for

disciplines, students of the experimental group were

introduced to modern methods of presenting theoreti-

cal and practical material. For a better understanding

and information comprehension, the application for

visualization of the ant colony optimization algorithm

was used as an example in the relevant topics.

At the third stage of work (the ascertaining stage

of the experiment), a survey of the participants in the

experiment was conducted. The research results of

the quality of education, obtained on the basis of the

developed survey forms, are presented in table 2. At

the end of the study of relevant topics, students of both

the experimental and control groups were tested in or-

der to identify the level of assimilation of knowledge

and skills for their integration in the study of various

academic disciplines, as well as the ability to solve

creative tasks.

After the second module, it was noted that in those

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367

Table 2: The results of a students survey of the experimental group regarding the quality of training in the educational program.

Survey of respondents interests after ﬁrst module after second module

Providing interesting discipline teaching 80% 95%

The need for visualization teaching methods 60% 100%

Willingness to solve creative problems 70% 100%

Sufﬁciency of solving speciﬁc tasks arising from employers 50% 97%

Satisfaction with the quality of teaching the discipline 80% 100%

groups where laboratory and practical exercises were

conducted with the help of a visualizer, the knowl-

edge, skills and ability to solve creative tasks were

found to be 40–50% higher (for various parameters).

The satisfaction of students with the sufﬁciency of the

quantity of speciﬁc tasks set by employers was almost

50% higher in the experimental group. All students

of the experimental groups were ready to solve cre-

ative tasks, at the same time, the number of such stu-

dents in the control groups was about 70%. Thus,

a change in the curriculum after clarifying the real

needs of students made it possible to increase student

satisfaction with the quality of teaching the discipline

by more than 20%. In modern conditions, a survey

of stakeholders showed how taking into account the

opinions of students affects the quality of teaching the

discipline and increases the level of students’ learn-

ing. The results of the experiment emphasized the

fact that the teacher conducting a regular survey of

students, studying their opinions and, based on their

needs, making changes to both their curriculum and

the plan for conducting their classes, may create an

integrated approach for maximizing the principle of

student centrism. Only the orientation on students’

interests and needs, provided by a timely survey, al-

lowed us to improve the quality of education of both

individual specialties and the educational system at

Zaporizhzhia National University as a whole.

4.2 Analysis of the Efﬁciency of the

Logistics System of Enterprises

Based on the information provided by the State Statis-

tics Service in annual statistical collections, we will

analyze the transportation of goods by road and

freight turnover of road transport in the regions of

Ukraine for 2010–2019 (ﬁgure 5, 6).

By regions of Ukraine, road freight transport in-

creased from 938.9 million tons in 2000 to 1147.0

million tons in 2019. The analysis of cargo trans-

portation by road in 2019 showed a high demand for

it in the regions of Ukraine, namely: Kyiv 51.5 mil-

lion tons, Cherkasy 34.6 million tons, Kharkov 29.6

million tons, Odessa 28.8 million tons, Lviv 24.4 mil-

lion tons, etc. However, the forecast of statistics on

road freight transport may decrease in the future, due

to the introduction of quarantine and periodic restric-

tions on trade in manufactured goods in stores and the

operation of markets, which will reduce the purchase

of goods by trade and entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, in general, we see that the transporta-

tion of goods by road is in demand in all regions of

Ukraine.

By regions, the freight turnover of road transport

increased from 19281.6 million tons per km (tkm)

in 2000 to 64952.9 million tkm in 2019. In 2019,

the analysis of road transport turnover by regions

of Ukraine showed the following activity, namely:

Lviv 5150.1 million tkm, Kyiv 4253.8 million tkm,

Kharkov 3783.4 million tkm, Odessa 3693.5 mil-

lion tkm, Cherkasy 2270.9 million tkm, etc. During

all periods, there was an increase in the turnover of

road transport, except for a slight decrease in 2019

compared to 2018. The structure of road transport

turnover shows the following share by regions (direc-

tions of movement) of Ukraine, namely: western –

22%, northern – 16%, central – 16%, southern – 11%.

Thus, as we see, the freight turnover of road transport

has a signiﬁcant impact on the economy of Ukraine,

so an important issue is to build an efﬁcient logistics

system in the regions of Ukraine.

Proﬁtability of operating activities as an integral

indicator of the efﬁciency of the logistics system is

calculated as follows: Po = (Op/Gc+Ac+Sc+Oe)∗

100%, where Po – proﬁtability of operating activi-

ties; Op – proﬁt from operating activities; Gc – cost

of goods sold (works, services); Ac – administrative

costs; Sc – sales costs; Oe – other operating expenses.

Based on the annual data on income, expenses and

proﬁt of the enterprise, which are given in the State-

ment of ﬁnancial results (Statement of comprehensive

income), we will calculate the integrated efﬁciency of

the logistics system of Transport Company LLC (ta-

ble 3).

Analysis of the integrated efﬁciency indicator of

the logistics system of Transport Company LLC for

2010–2019 showed that its indicator decreased from

15.4% to 13.6% every year. Therefore, in 2020,

the program presented in the work was introduced,

which increased the efﬁciency of the logistics sys-

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368

Figure 5: Freight turnover of road transport by regions.

Table 3: Calculation of the integrated indicator of the efﬁciency of the logistics system.

Indicator 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Integrated efﬁciency index

of the logistics system, %

15.4 15.2 15.0 14.8 14.6 14.4 14.2 14.0 13.8 13.6 23.1

Figure 6: Freight turnover structure of road transport by

region in 2018.

tem of Transport Company LLC by 1.5 times. Efﬁ-

cient construction of transport routes signiﬁcantly re-

duced the cost of delivery of goods, which increased

the efﬁciency of the logistics system and the company

“Transport Company” in general. The developed pro-

gram is universal, so its implementation is possible at

transport enterprises, as well as at private enterprises

and state institutions in the regions of Ukraine, which

will increase their economic efﬁciency.

An assessment of the economic efﬁciency of lo-

gistics services can be made by calculating the indi-

cator of the same name, reﬂecting the amount of lo-

gistics costs that are necessary to ensure 1% of the

quality of service: Le = Lc/Qs, where Lc – logistics

costs associated with the execution of a service order

in the logistics system, UAH; Qs – the quality of lo-

gistics services, assessed by the degree of satisfaction

of consumers’ requests, %.

The assessment of the economic efﬁciency of lo-

gistics services of Transport Company LLC for 2020

showed an increase in its efﬁciency indicator by re-

ducing logistics costs and improving the quality of

service in the logistics system.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This article analyzes the ways of developing forms

and methods of teaching and learning with the aim to

form students’ creative thinking that helps to increase

creative potential. A visualization of the ant colony

optimization algorithm is proposed as a means of in-

teractive teaching of students of various specialties

in logistical tasks. Full visualization of the ant algo-

rithm, including: graph construction, simulation of a

dynamic network (adding and deleting a graph while

running an algorithm), visualizing the movement of a

large number of ants, saving and loading a graph, giv-

ing the user the ability to clean visible layers during

algorithm operation for visualization simpliﬁcation,

has been implemented. The conducted comparative

analysis proved that with the correct algorithm con-

Innovative Methods of Information Visualization in Transport Logistics and Training Organization

369

struction it is possible to achieve strong performance

in choosing the optimal routes.

During the experiment to verify the effectiveness

of the use of visualization in achieving academic com-

petencies, it was noted that about 40% of students

consider it necessary to change the curriculum in the

direction of using visualization of teaching methods.

After classes, a comparison of the results of the ex-

perimental and control groups showed that skills and

abilities to solve creative problems were higher by

40–50%. Students’ satisfaction with the quality of

teaching and the number of solved practical problems

also increased by 20–30%, which indicates the pos-

itive impact of this interactive method on the edu-

cational process. So, to conclude, we can say that

the symbiosis of collective work on the study of sci-

entiﬁc problems and the introduction of development

results into the educational process of the specialties

“Accounting and Taxation” and “Software Engineer-

ing” made it possible to improve the quality of teach-

ing disciplines. Thus, the use of active and interac-

tive methods in the process of teaching engineering

and economic specialties helps to optimize the edu-

cational process, increases the informative capacity

of the material studied, as well as improves the ef-

ﬁciency of learning.

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