Visual-Related Factors in Mobile Iconic Communication

The purpose of this exploratory, sequential, mixed methods design research was to explore current design trends and patterns in mobile application icons by analyzing existing icon elements and principles of design.

Continue Reading →

Visual Literacy: Does It Enhance Leadership Abilities Required for the Twenty-first Century?

The twenty-first century hosts a well-established global economy, where leaders are required to have increasingly complex skills that include creativity, innovation, vision, relatability, critical thinking and well-honed communications methods. The experience gained by learning to be visually literate includes the ability to see, observe, analyze, describe and interpret-leading to honing critical thinking skills, visual communications, problem-solving and the ability to articulate your thoughts both verbally and visually. This qualitative research explores the potential benefits to leaders in being visually literate.

Continue Reading →

Visual literacy in Instructional Design Programs

In this technologically advanced environment, users have become highly visual, with television, videos, web sites and images dominating the learning environment. These new forms of searching and learning are changing the perspective of what it means to be literate. Literacy can no longer solely rely on text-based materials, but should also incorporate digital images and sounds. Higher education seems to be lagging behind with incorporating visual literacy into their academic programs. This paper explores visual literacy, the digital native, and the importance of integrating visual literacy into our learning curriculum, especially in instructional design programs.

Continue Reading →

Visual Literacy in Anatomy

All branches of anatomy (gross anatomy, histology, neuroanatomy, and embryology) involve significant amounts of visual identification. Understanding the spatial relationship and visual representations of anatomical structures forms the basis for much of anatomy education, particularly in laboratory courses. Students in these courses frequently struggle with the visual aspects of identification, and many lack the metacognitive awareness to identify this problem. The research presented here details a series of experiments designed to elucidate the factors involved in students’ difficulties with studying the visual aspects of anatomy.

Continue Reading →

Visual Language, Visual Literacy: Education a la Modes

I [the author] am writing about visual literacy and visual texts, and in doing so, I will share with you examples of children’s ‘picturebooks’ where alphabetic print is no longer the primary carrier of meaning and where images and print often are symbiotic.

Continue Reading →

Visual Approach and Design: The Appropriate Characteristics of Instructional Photos as a Tool to Support Elementary Setting in Kuwait

This study provided a guide for appropriate characteristics of Instructional Photo to be used by teachers, trainers, coaches, instructors, and anyone else who desires to deliver knowledge and present content with visual meaning to elementary students in the state of Kuwait as a teaching style that supports teachers, facilitates clarification, and gets the learners’ attention and motivates them.

Continue Reading →

Toward a New Vision for Media Literacy Instruction

In 2007, film critic Kevin B. Lee began publishing “video essays,” which he described as videos that “take footage from films and reconfigure them using editing, text, graphics and voiceover to reveal startling observations and insights, visualizing them in ways that text criticism can’t,”1 on his blog Also Like Life. When I started working at the University of Maryland’s Nonprint Media Services Library (now Library Media Services) in 2013, I knew I wanted to incorporate this technique into our instructional efforts. Traditionally, NPMS’s instruction had focused on finding audiovisual materials; our new objective was to teach students how to create something new from the items in our collection.

Continue Reading →

The Research on Visual Literacy in Transliteracy as the Main Ability to Understand and Communicate in the 21st Century

In this paper, the author describes the cultural and technological context of visual literacy, resulting from the specificity of the evolutionarily expanding culture of image and the development of the information society, in the context of the concept of transliteracy. It presents the results of pilot studies of Polish university students for specific visual skills. Comparative material for research tasks of the prepared project “The legitimacy of visual literacy in the process of education” is a set of visual literacy (Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, 2011) developed in academic and scientific environments in the USA (The Association of College and Research Libraries, ACRL).

Continue Reading →

The Language of Movies: Using Film to Teach Visual Literacy in the EFL Classroom

Movies are an authentic and motivating resource for language instruction. They are also often viewed as a pacifier or a piece of candy in the classroom. This capstone aims to address the best practices for incorporating film into the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in order to teach critical 21st century skills such as visual literacy. A series of content-based lessons have been designed to promote critical thinking skills while simultaneously developing film and media literacy. This five-unit curriculum contains a series of edited film clips, PowerPoint slides, and supporting documents for EFL professionals who are looking to incorporate new literacies into their classrooms.

Continue Reading →

Students as Curators: Visual Literacy, Public Scholarship, and Public Health

Designing a public exhibition is one way for students to meet the goals of the Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education quoted above. Students able to combine visual literacy with strong writing will be better prepared“to function creatively and confidently in the working environments of the twenty-first century” (Weber 2007). Scientists rely on visual images, animations, and 3D models to convey research findings and concepts, yet educational research shows that students“do not necessarily automatically acquire visual literacy during general instruction,” but must be explicitly taught these skills (Schönborn et al. 2006). Exhibition design provides a powerful pedagogical approach, helping students learn to “author” in a manner distinct from traditional writing.

Continue Reading →

Sequential Art in Library Credit Instruction: Exploring Multiple Literacies Through Graphic Novels, Comics, and Comix

Sequential art is a unique storytelling medium that combines visuals and content in a deliberate, specific delivery in order to engage audiences on emotional and cognitive levels. Consequently, graphic novels, comics, and comix are a rich educational medium for undergraduate credit instruction in academic libraries, precisely because this alternative delivery of content can effectively educate many learning styles. This article documents the development and implementation of an undergraduate, upper division credit-bearing course in an academic library that examined multiple types of literacy through the medium, with commentary on instructional strategies for other academic librarians and professors.

Continue Reading →

Pin This: Working with Faculty to Enrich the Classroom Environment via Pinterest

Focusing on academic libraries and librarians who are extending the boundaries of e-learning, this collection of essays presents new ways of using information and communication technologies to create learning experiences for a variety of user communities. Essays feature e-learning projects involving MOOCs (massive open online courses), augmented reality, chatbots and other innovative applications. Contributors describe the process of project development, from determination of need, to exploration of tools, project design and user assessment.

Continue Reading →

Not Just a Pretty Picture: Visual Literacy Education Through Art for Young Children

The purpose of this paper is to understand young children’s knowledge of visual literacy elements as well as their ability to comprehend newly introduced visual literacy concepts. The study also examined existing support for visual literacy programs from parents and educators. The study explored the knowledge of basic visual literacy elements of young children enrolled in two private schools in the New York City metropolitan area.

Continue Reading →

MOOC Global/Local Shakespeare: New Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare in Taiwan and Beyond

Chen adopts an intercultural perspective in her Shakespeare classes and online courses. She emphasizes collaborative activities and student participation, while drawing extensively from manga and Taiwanese Shakespearean productions housed in the Taiwan Shakespeare Database.

Continue Reading →

Library Graphic Design Best Practices and Approval Processes

The purpose of this paper is to explore graphic design best practices and approval processes used by librarians. This paper used an online, qualitative survey to collect data on librarians’ design processes and best practices. The responses were reviewed to determine categories and themes of librarians’ design processes and best practices to gain an understanding of the state of graphic design in libraries.

Continue Reading →

Learning Program for Enhancing Visual Literacy for Non-Design Students Using a CMS to Share Outcomes

This study proposes a basic learning program for enhancing visual literacy using an original Web content management system (Web CMS) to share students’ outcomes in class as a blog post. It seeks to reinforce students’ understanding and awareness of the design of visual content. The learning program described in this research focuses on to address how to create meanings of visual content that is important to express information visually, and includes three exercises based on perception, visual variables, and signification. The Web CMS to publish student works and share in class helps enhance students’ reflection. We also developed a rubric as an assessment device for students’ outcomes. The content of the learning program and its implementation are described with the support of observational data.

Continue Reading →

Interpretation of Journalistic Photographs as an Instrument of Visual Literacy Education

Images are produced, used and distributed on an enormous scale. However, the skills of understanding, interpreting and using images as well as thinking and learning in terms of images are taken for granted, and thus, they are not sufficiently taught and developed, especially in higher education. The need for introducing visual literacy into the curriculum was identified in late 1960s, but no concrete guidelines have followed. This study proposes to apply interpretation of journalistic photographs as an instrument of visual literacy education. The main focus is on the image interpretation process and the kinds of meanings viewers apply to a photograph in the interpretation process. In each of the four articles included in this study, a model or approach to photography interpretation is proposed.

Continue Reading →