TOWARDS AN INITIAL SEMIOTIC VIEW

OF THE INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC ORGANISER

Mario J. Lopez and Hector R. Ponce

VirtuaLab, University of Santiago of Chile, Av. L B O’Higgins 3363, Santiago, Chile

Keywords: Interactive graphic organiser, Semiotics, Visual learning strategy, Cognitive skill, Software component.

Abstract: This paper presents a first approach to understand a visual software application, named Interactive Graphic

Organiser (IGO), from a semiotic point of view. The paper begins with the original conceptual background

review, which came from both component software engineering and visual learning. The paper then moves to

describe the technology and its impacts; the visual technology developed are IGOs, that allows cognitive

skills development, and IGO based applications. Next and under the working hypothesis that the use of

graphic organisers significantly improved involved cognitive skills, the paper describes some results from

experimental research conducted to measure some of the visual technology’s impacts. The paper concludes

that, although initial treatment cannot claim to be comprehensive, it does provide a conceptual view and

provides insight into the practices of those involved around IGOs and their applications.

1 INTRODUCTION

The core visual technology analysed in this paper is

the Interactive Graphic Organiser (IGO) (Ponce, et

al., 2008). This is a software application that

combines non-linguist representations (shapes,

symbols and arrows) with linguist elements (words

and phrases) and a series of basic functions, which

allows interactivity. IGOs so far have educational

and business uses. In education, IGOs support the

development and practice of cognitive skills for

reading comprehension and writing (text production).

In business, IGOs support the development and

practice of higher order cognitive skills involved in

business planning and strategy execution. Each IGO

points to one specific cognitive skill. Combined

IGOs make up larger applications for specific

purposes.

This paper describes the conceptual background

for the visual technology: component software

engineering and visual learning. Next, it describes

the visual technology as well as e-PELS, one of the

larger applications built up with IGOs. The paper

then presents some results of the technology impact

on users. After that, the paper attempts to provide a

first approach to look at the IGOs from the semiotic

viewpoint. Finally, it presents a couple of remarks as

a way of conclusions.

2 BACKGROUND

IGO’s conceptual background comes from two

sources, one from the ICT area (component software

engineering) and the other from the educational area

(visual learning).

2.1 Component Software Engineering

Interactive Graphic Organisers as a technology is

based on software components. A number of

components constitute each organiser and the

integration of IGO components generates software

applications with more functionality. A software

component is a set of objects that carry out a specific

function, specify interfaces and work independently

from each other. Software components may include

other components to make up more complex

software systems (Laitkorpi and Jaaksi, 1999; Broy,

et al., 1998). Software components major

characteristics include composition (components

integration to form larger granularity components);

encapsulation (component works as a ‘black box’);

interoperability (components work independently

and interact with other components); multi platform

(components work independently from hardware and

operating system); and self-contained (components

125

Lopez M. and Ponce H.

TOWARDS AN INITIAL SEMIOTIC VIEW OF THE INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC ORGANISER.

DOI: 10.5220/0003269001250132

In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3

do not depend from other components to achieve

their functions) (Crnkovic and Larsonn 2002).

A software component construction essential

aspect is the interface among components. The

interface is the communication mechanism between

two components, which allows interoperability. A

software component has a ‘provide interface’ that

declares the services provided and a ‘require

interface’ that declares the required services to

operate correctly. Another important aspect is

software components composition that allows

interconnecting components through their interfaces.

There are three types of component composition:

sequential (when an adapter is required to connect

two incompatible components); hierarchical (when a

component executes a service required by a

compatible component); and additive (when two or

more components make up a component of greater

granularity) (Hall, 2007). The composition process

is a class of client-server process. The client

component requires a service offered by the server

component interface. In its turn, the server

component executes the required function and

returns its results to the client.

2.2 Visual Learning

Visual learning takes into account that an important

set of learning strategies requires mental

representations that result in visual schemes for their

understanding. For example, there are simple

learning techniques paragraph underlining and

margin notes, and other techniques that require

complex cognitive processes, such as conceptual

mapping.

The advantages of introducing strategies that

require visual representation are diverse and based

on the fact that about 80% of perceived information

comes through the visual channel. A visual learning

principle is that students, using visual tools, can

clarify their thinking, enhance their understanding,

integrate new knowledge and, additionally, identify

misconceptions (Gardner, 2003). A visual scheme

allows students to discover and design patterns,

interrelation-ships and interdependencies, and

provide opportunities to develop creative thinking

(Lopez, et al., 2007). For example, through a

differences and similarities diagram, students have a

visual strategy that allows them to identify

similarities and differences between two or more

objects (Witherell and McMackin, 2005). This

technique facilitates reading skills, develops

diagramming abilities, and synthesis through

structured analysis registration of similarities and

differences. Graphic organisers are typical

representatives of visual learning. Graphic

organisers encourage the development of structured

activities; help to display content in a graphical form,

and support the development of cognitive skills

(Marzano, et al., 2001).

Graphic organisers, when use as thinking tools,

facilitate the development of students’ deep learning,

discouraging a memory based or repetitive learning

(Ausubel, 1963). Graphic organisers help to build

substantive and non-arbitrary relationships between

what it is already known and what it is to be learnt

(Coll, 1991). Thus, a learning process is activated

where new understandings take place by providing

and generating meaningful experiences for learners.

(Entwistle, 1981; Gibbs, 1999). Three requisites are

required to accomplish this task. First, content

logical significance; that is, content structure should

facilitate how learners build relations between new

and their previous knowledge. Second,

psychological significance of content; related to the

internal representation made by learners of logical

significant of content. Third, learners’ favourable

attitude given by the disposition to substantively,

profoundly and no literally relate their cognitive

structure with the new material (Gibbs, 1999). The

development of deep learning through the use of

graphic organisers in educational environments

depends upon the mediation between didactic

(methods and strategies) and learning outcomes

(Lopez and Ponce 2004). This requires a rigorous

and systematic teaching and learning planning,

including content and aims characteristics, learner

starting level, methods, didactic sequences, and

learning strategies to facilitate deep meaning of

contents and activities. Basic cognitive operations

such as observation, comparison, classification,

analysis and synthesis are better developed when

learning activities consciously put emphasis on their

need to process content and create new knowledge

(Amestoy, 2002).

Learning is a process in which “people generate

from their experience the concepts, rules and

principles that guide their behaviour in new

situation” (Kolb, et al., 1991). Learning takes place

through a continuous and recurrent sequence of

actual experiences and, as experiences by

themselves are insufficient, thought, observation,

and abstract concept construction go along with

experiences. Thus, it is suggested that an effective

implementation of graphic organisers should follow

the experiential learning process: (1) Concrete

experiences followed by (2) observation and

reflection of such experiences, which leads to the (3)

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formation of abstract concepts and the constructions

of principles or generalisations, followed by (4) the

testing of such concepts in new situations.

3 VISUAL TECHNOLOGY

The following is a brief description of IGO and a

software application developed using software

components such as the IGOs.

3.1 Interactive Graphic Organisers

Interactive Graphic Organisers facilitate the

discovery and design of patterns, relationships, and

interrelationships, as well as helping to develop

creative thinking. IGOs educational uses include (a)

content visual presentation on its own (Ponce, et al.,

2008) or as an add-in for PowerPoint (Lopez, et al.,

2008). (b) Development of students’ learning

activities for either class work or homework. (c)

Reading understanding allowing the reader-learner

to make sense or meaning, before, during and after

reading. (d) Writing producing allowing the

writer-learner to order ideas before writing,

paraphrase, write short tales and so on. IGOs

business uses include (a) content visual presentation

on its own or as an add-in for PowerPoint. (b)

Developing companies’ strategic plans. (c) Linking

strategies to operations.

Each organiser has functionalities in a tool bar to

create, edit, remove, store, retrieve and print what

the user is developing or has completed. IGOs are

highly interactive through adding and editing the

graphic forms. The graphic organisers’ features

grant them a high degree of interactivity, allowing

cognitive skills development and practice, as shown

in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1: IGO Cause and Effect.

Figure 2: IGO Swot.

3.2 Software Tools

Interactive Graphic Organisers are software

components technology implemented in Adobe

Flash (Sametinger, 1997, Gallardo, et al., 2009).

This allows easy integration with other components

and into Web environments and Flash compatible

software. The application to describe is the

component software (Szyperski 1998) virtual

training programme in comprehensive reading

(e-PELS, from its acronym in Spanish) (Ponce, et al.,

2007a and 2007b). e-PELS design and development

followed Roman (2004) and Roman and Gallegos

(1994), who proposed a training programme in

comprehensive reading based on a set of cognitive

and meta-cognitive skills.

The basic cognitive processes identified are (1)

information acquisition strategies, (2) information

coding strategies, (3) information retrieval strategies,

and (4) information processing support strategies. In

his original proposal, Roman suggested the following

strategies: underlining, paraphrasing, self-

questioning, text structure and conceptual maps. The

programme e-PELS expanded conceptual mapping to

the use of interactive graphic organisers and added

strategies for summarising and word meaning.

For the acquisition strategies, e-PELS includes

underlining or colouring, to stand out relevant words

or phrases, and paraphrasing, to allow students their

own wording of texts. For the coding strategies,

e-PELS incorporates the text structure strategy

(problem solving, cause-effect, descriptive,

comparison and time sequence), self questioning to

relate and think about the text, and interactive graphic

organisers for the organisation of ideas or arguments

within the source text. For the retrieval strategy,

e-PELS incorporates the summary for synthesising

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127

the text. For the word meaning strategy, e-PELS

includes the word box. e-PELS also includes other

functionalities that are typical to this sort of software:

new, open, save. As e-PELS is software component

based, integration into other applications (flash or

Web) is rather easy.

Figure 3 is an image of e-PELS in use. Each of the

strategies is accessible from a tab: Highlight and

paraphrase; text structure; graphic organisers,

summary and word box.

Figure 3: e-PELS in use.

4 TECHNOLOGY IMPACTS

With the hypothesis that use of IGOs and e-PELS

would have a positive effect on users, research

designs followed the cuasi-experimental model, with

control and experimental groups. IGOs evaluation

was with a higher education group of students and

e-PELS evaluation was with 18 primary schools.

4.1 IGOs Impacts

The research was into an information systems design

course, which belongs to the seventh level (out of

twelve) of the Civil Industrial Engineering degree at

the University of Santiago, Chile (Lopez, et al.,

2009). 45 students, organised into 14 teams, on the

course during a first university term constituted the

experimental group. 35 students, organised into 9

teams, on the same course but taken on the previous

university term constituted the control group.

Therefore, different students constituted the

experimental and control groups.

The experimental group participated in learning

activities that integrated the IGO software. The

experimental group used five IGOs in four different

learning activities. Typically, learning activities

included learning outcome identification; activity’s

name and brief description; IGO(s) to be used (if

appropriate), and systematic instructions for

producing digital and physical evidence. The

previous term, the control group did not use any

IGOs to carry out the same learning activities.

The following is an example of the experiences

with IGOs carried out by the students in the

experimental group. In this example, the

experimental (14 teams) and control (9 teams)

groups were assessed for their ability to design

logical components of their computer application

prototype. Both groups had to design the logical

components of an information system prototype. The

experimental group made use of two Interactive

Graphic Organisers for the assignment, while the

control group did not use any graphic organisers.

The control group design ended to be both very

intuitive and software applications disorderly listed.

The experimental group had support from two

Interactive Graphic Organisers. Initially from the

Brainstorming IGO, this enabled them to list all

necessary components that their prototype should

have included. The complete list was then analysed,

prioritized, and entered into the Sequencer IGO.

Figure 4 shows the structure of the Interactive

Graphic Organisers Brainstorming and figure 5 the

IGO Sequencer.

Figure 4: IGO Brainstorming.

Figure 5: IGO Sequencer.

Equivalent assessment marks for experimental

and control groups were compared through t-test

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(when data was normally distributed) or U test

(when data was not normally distributed). The data

showed that the teams use of the Brainstorming and

Sequencer IGOs had a significant impact for

producing a programme pseudo coding (U = 34.5,

p-value = .037, and α = .05).

Qualitative data on students’ perceptions of IGO

uses showed that their most valued aspects were: (1)

structural thinking and (2) keep focus on what

matters. Regarding the first, students indicated that

IGOs use helped them to not only think but also, and

more importantly, to think more structurally, think

with more sense, organise ideas more easily and

synthesise more rapidly. Regarding the second,

students considered that using the IGO software

allowed them keeping focus on what mattered to the

course: solve an information problem through an

information system design and prototype.

4.2 e-PELS Impacts

The following analysis comes from an experimental

evaluation of e-PELS with 4th grade elementary

students (Ponce, et al., to be published). It will be

shown how the different visual learning strategies

included in e-PELS were articulated to support a

meaning construction process. This was carried out

through a training programme that lasted 11 sessions

of two-hours each for two months at the school’s

computer lab. Some examples are shown and the

performance of the students on each strategy

included in e-PELS. The following figures show a

typical use of highlighting and paraphrasing

strategies for the students in the experimental group.

Figure 6: Highlighting and paraphrasing.

The evidence demonstrated that at the beginning

of the training programme, students in the

experimental group did not know how to use the

highlighting strategy; they were not able to

differentiate main ideas for a later understanding of

the text. By the seventh training session, most

students identified keys words or phrases, without

highlighting extensively. Regarding the paraphrasing

strategy, the evaluation of the evidence

demonstrated that at the end of the training process,

the synthesis as a thinking skill was not completed

developed in these students. However, they replaced

it by constructing phrases that correctly articulate the

elements of the source text. Student’s ability to

articulate more significant phrases increased as the

sessions went by. The paraphrasing, initially seen as

an end, it was soon transformed into a skill to

produce small pieces of text increasingly

personalized and significant.

Figures 7 and 8 show an exemplary use of text

structure strategy and interactive graphic organiser,

respectively.

Figure 7: Use of text structure and self-questioning.

Figure 8: Use interactive graphic organiser.

For the use of text and self-questioning, the

evidence shows that students increasingly

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129

understood the explicit text elements. At the

beginning of the training process, students showed a

superficial comprehension of the reading challenges

present in their training. As the students continued in

their training, they were able to explore, process,

repeat and maintain the reading’s original sense.

Text structure and self-questioning evolved from a

level of recognition up to a level of integration and

coherence. For the use of the graphical organisation

strategy, the evidence showed that students use was

easy. The diagrammatic representation of basic

cognitive skills facilitated its development,

particularly those related to skills such as

comparison, analogy, identifying pros and cons and

sequences. To work with this strategy, students

processed the source text using the previous

strategies included in e-PELS, so graphic organisers

were used to identify specific aspects of the text that

require analysis. For example, differences and

similarities between characters in a tale, analogies

between known things by the students and new

elements discovered in the text, causes and effects of

problems stated in the source text, among others.

Quantitative data showed that 757 pupils in 27

classes form the experimental group took the pre and

post tests (PLC forms A and B respectively). 85

pupils in 3 classes from the control group took the

same pre and post tests. 24 out of the 27 classes in

the experimental group showed an increase their

reading understanding level in the posttest as

compared with their level in the pretest. Two of the

three classes in the control group slightly decreased

their reading understanding level; the third had a

small increase. A cluster analysis, for the pretest,

determined that classes fell into three types, two of

which had control groups. Therefore, significance

and effect sizes comparison are possible within these

two cluster types. 12 classes in the experimental

group had significant increase in reading

understanding in comparison to the control group.

Effect sizes, measured with a d Cohen Coefficient,

were up to 0.7 standard deviations, which is a

medium, though relevant, size effect.

5 TOWARDS A SEMIOTIC VIEW

The definition of Interactive Graphic Organiser as a

combination of non-linguist representations (shapes,

symbols and arrows) with linguist elements (words

and phrases) means that IGO is full of signs.

Although categories are not exclusive, IGOs

incorporate Peirce’s classic distinction between

iconic, indexical and symbolic signs (de Souza

2005). There are iconic signs, which resembles

something, in the form of links pointing to IGOs

functionalities. As a sign is not iconic until the

interpreter recognises it as such, if the cursor is on

the sign, a micro help message comes into view.

There are indexical signs, which indicate

something, in the form of connectors to facilitate

relations. As a sign is not an index until the

interpreter recognises as such, when adding a new

shape, the relationship, because it is pre drawn,

appears simultaneously with the shape.

There are symbolic signs, which arbitrarily

represent something, in the form of text boxes to

enter conventional words or phrases, since words are

examples of symbolic sign. Figure 9 describes IGO

structure and its signs.

Figure 9: IGO structure and its signs.

e-PELS and other software tools built up with

IGOs software components inherit the analysis as

arrangements of diverse sign types.

One of IGOs major features is their high

interactivity; users have to be active and

participative to complete with words and phrases to

obtain meaningful diagrams. The conceptual

framework Semiotic Engineering (de Souza 2005),

describes IGOs since it is a semiotic theory of

human–computer interaction, where interactive

computer systems allow messages flow from

designers to users.

Educational uses of IGOs include (a) content

visual presentation; (b) students’ learning activities

development for either class work or homework; and

these cases, instructors and students engage in

teaching/learning activities. Business uses of IGOs

include (a) content visual presentation for

developing companies’ strategic plans and (b)

linking strategies to operations. In these cases,

managers and employees engage in activities for

planning/executing strategies. All these cases can be

explained through semiotic mediation (Hull and

Saxon 2009); that is, the mediation of something by

someone to someone else by means of the modality

ICISO 2010 - International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations

130

of language. Semiotic mediation is practical to

understand the engaged activities of instructors and

students and that of managers and employee when

they use interactive graphic organisers.

Information Systems also help to analyse IGOs

and e-PELS. One angle to describe information

systems is through a six fields ladder: physical

world, empirics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and

social world (Stamper, et al., 2000). This

Semiotic perspective not only offers a deeper

understanding about IGOs and e-PELS, but also

about their milieu, ranging from technology to social

issues. For example, for e-PELS, the physical field

or level includes school classroom and computer

laboratory hardware, settings, budget and properties.

The empiric level comprises different existing

technological capacity, communication channel. The

syntactic level considers IGOs diagrams’ formal

structure, language and logic; associated software

and files. Semantics consider IGOs user’s meanings

and significations. Pragmatics includes IGOs

diagrams purpose (development of cognitive skills)

and participants’ interactions and negotiations. The

social world comprises participants’ commitments,

teaching and learning or managerial styles

approaches and ICT use abilities.

One of the starting points for this paper was to

seek for a conceptual viewpoint that united the

initial separated learning and technological

backgrounds. An interesting approach that looks

simultaneously at learning and use of technology is

Social Semiotics (Skaar 2009), which describes the

connections between learning and the use of

technology. First, learning is seen as taking place

through the semiotic work performed with created

signs and texts. Second, digital technology

establishes new premises for learning through the

meaning-creating process.

Semiotics assumes that sign-systems play a

major part in the construction of social reality and

that reality connect closely with sign-systems in

which they are experienced (Chandler 2007). From

this point of view, the visual technology described

here, or rather, the sign-system sought to play a role

in the construction of social reality. That is, at least

in Chile, on the one hand, children, through

educational use of IGOs, having a better reading

understanding and writing producing and, on the

other hand, small and medium size company

managers, through business use of IGOS, having

better planning and executing of their strategies.

6 CONCLUSIONS

As stated in the Introduction, this paper attempted to

provide a first approach to look at the IGOs from the

semiotic viewpoint. As Semiotics is a huge field, this

initial treatment cannot claim to be comprehensive.

However, within the range of this short analysis, it

does give a unified conceptual view and provides

insight into the practices of those involved around

IGOs and their applications.

This paper not only described the sign-systems,

or visual technologies, but also showed that they had

an impact on, or stood for something to, their users.

According to Semiotics, the IGOs sign-systems for

developing cognitive skills consist of pre drawn

diagrams (the representamen); users interacting with

the diagrams (the object) and the idea that IGOs

repeated and systematic use produce cognitive

automaticity (the interpretant).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to FONDEF (Chilean

Research and Development Agency) for financing

the development of IGOs through project

TE04i1005; to the Teaching Division, University of

Santiago for financing the IGO evaluation; and to

Enlaces (Chilean Ministry of Education

Technological Agency) for financing e-PELS

evaluation through project 2356/08.

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