Skip to content Skip to navigation

Connexions

You are here: Home » Content » Visual Data Design Assignment

Navigation

Content Actions
  • Download module PDF
  • Add to ...
    Add the module to:
    • My Favorites
    • A lens
    • An external social bookmarking service
    • My Favorites (What is 'My Favorites'?)
      'My Favorites' is a special kind of lens which you can use to bookmark modules and collections directly in Connexions. 'My Favorites' can only be seen by you, and collections saved in 'My Favorites' can remember the last module you were on. You need a Connexions account to use 'My Favorites'.
    • A lens (What is a lens?)

      Definition of a lens

      Lenses

      A lens is a custom view of Connexions content. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see Connexions through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

      What is in a lens?

      Lens makers point to Connexions materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

      Who can create a lens?

      Any individual Connexions member, a community, or a respected organization.

    • External bookmarks
  • E-mail the author

Recently Viewed

This feature requires Javascript to be enabled.

Visual Data Design Assignment

Module by: The Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication

Summary: In this assignment from a writing course for upper-level bioscience majors at Rice University, students prepare a figure, using photographic images from a microscope, for an already published journal article. Although the assignment is specific to the course and to bioscience students, other courses and disciplines may have similar opportunities for students to design visuals for professional documents. This assignment may be adapted for such situations.

Overview

For this assignment you will design a visual aid for Figure 1D in the published article that we provide.

Purposes

Bioscientists frequently publish visual data such as gels, blots, microarrays, and photographs. Certain strategies help an author communicate visual data accurately, concisely, and effectively. In this assignment, you will practice the technique of designing a visual aid from “raw” micrographic data.

Tasks

Examine the article for which you are preparing the visual. At a minimum, you should read the article’s Introduction and the section of the Results entitled, “Generation of Mice Expressing a Truncated MeCP2 Protein.” We will provide you with four micrographic (microscopic photograph) images by email. Each photograph represents a 50 μm x 43 μm section of tissue. Use the Results section and the Figure 1D caption to help you decide how to crop, label, and arrange elements of the figure.

As you design the visual, ask yourself the following questions:

  • How much of each micrograph is necessary to include in order to concisely, accurately, and effectively communicate the data?
  • How should I label the visual aid to show the types of cells (wild-type and mutant) and antibodies (C-terminal and MeCP2N15) used?
  • How can I illustrate the scale of the micrographs?

Evaluation

We will evaluate your visual data analysis assignment according to following criteria:

  • Cropping and labeling adhere to design conventions
  • Design of the visual accurately, concisely, and effectively communicates the findings of the authors

Comments, questions, feedback, criticisms?

Send feedback