The ubiquitousness of images in the digital era highlights the importance of individuals’ visual communication skills in the 21st Century. We conducted a literature review of visual literacy initiatives in academic institutions to illustrate best practices for imparting these skills in students. The literature review identified five categories of visual literacy educational strategies in academic institutions including: the availability of instructional scaffolds, faculty’s creation of activities and assignments aimed at increasing students’ abilities to interpret and create visual images, lectures and readings that promoted visual design principles, the development of programs and courses centered on visual communication, and research initiatives that sought to identify and improve individuals’ skills in communicating visually. The latter two strategies remained especially popular in institutions outside of the United States. All of the efforts served to focus attention to the importance of visual literacy competencies in higher education.
This paper reports on attempts to incorporate creative visual literacy, by way of student owned technology, and sharing of student-generated multimedia amongst peers to enhance learning in a first year human physiology course. In 2013, students were set the task of producing an animated video, which outlined the pathogenesis of a chosen disease. Students were then encouraged to view each other’s videos. Students in the same course in 2012 engaged in a purely written, non-shared task. The depth of topic understanding did not change between 2012 and 2013. Moderating for cohort variation, students in 2013 showed poorer overall learning outcomes than students in the 2012 cohort. The authors speculate that the peer mediated aspect of the learning activity failed, and that the video task was disruptive to wider learning, due to it being time consuming and unfamiliar to students.
In the twenty-first century, visual texts are vital to learning in English language arts (ELA). As English educators, we know the importance of telling and sharing stories in various formats in order to build community as well as facilitate deep understanding of the concepts we teach. In our methods courses for undergraduates, two of our course projects help students think creatively and reflectively about themselves as ELA teachers, particularly in this time of changing demands, standards, and high-stakes testing. Further, these projects also help to expand students’ understanding of visual and digital ELA content and promote their development as sophisticated consumers of these texts. However, the projects also encourage students to be producers of digital content and to better understand the affordances of multimodal composition. We ask students to use digital tools such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, and VoiceThread to achieve our goals. In this chapter, we share the multimodal assignments we use and student project examples. While we teach in a university setting, we discuss adaptations to these projects that make them applicable to learners in other contexts.
Librarians often become de facto graphic designers for their libraries, taking responsibility for designing signage, handouts, brochures, web pages, and many other promotional, instructional, and wayfinding documents. However, the majority of librarians with graphic design responsibilities are not trained as graphic designers. This exploratory research study surveyed librarians to determine their graphic design training and preparation for their assumed design duties as well as the support and training they desire. Results from this study can be used by library administrators when providing support for librarians with graphic design duties.
Advancements in social media technologies have made it easier than ever to locate, produce, and share online video. Much of the rapid expansion of online video can be attributed to YouTube, which has become the largest and most popular video-sharing platform online. The development of visual and media literacy (VML) competencies is valuable when engaging with social media content and technologies like YouTube. This chapter illustrates how VML have been integrated within a set of educational YouTube video projects in an online university course that has been offered regularly since 2008. The projects discussed in this chapter were designed for an audience of adult educators, but have applicability in K–16 classrooms. YouTube was selected as the central video platform for several reasons, which include practical, technological, and societal factors. Competencies described in published definitions of VML frame the discussion. Curation projects involve finding, interpreting, and evaluating video resources, which are grouped into collections for educational purposes. Educational video creation projects include video blogs, remix, PowerPoint movies, and interactive videos.
With evidence that arts engagement and nonlinear thinking style both utilize insight, intuition, and emotion in the decision making process, the literature has driven an investigation of the relationship between levels of arts engagement and thinking style preference. This nonexperimental correlational study (N = 101) explored (a) the prevalence of linear, nonlinear, or balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style of professionals working in museums. (b) Whether thinking style has a relationship with (i) age; (ii) sex; (iii) academic major; (iv) occupation; (v) levels of arts engagement. Two theoretical frameworks underpinned this study: (a) new literacies and (b) cognitive styles.
This paper provides an overview of how to reach the millennial generation, primarily at the higher education level. However, it does address an audience of K12 teachers, higher education faculty, researchers, administrators, and practitioners, who not only teach the higher education population of students, but who prepare students who will one day attain a postsecondary education. Currently used practices that have been grounded in theory are presented along with evidence of curricular integration of visual and media literacy skills. The skills are in alignment with the standards of the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL), the definition of visual literacy from the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), and the definition of media literacy from the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).
This paper reports changes in the Technion technology/mechanics teacher education courses aimed to enhance students’ knowledge and skills in teaching digital design and manufacturing. The two major changes are: (1) equipping the departmental laboratory of technology with modern computer aided design software tools (Creo, Mathcad) and 3D printer, and (2) upgrading the courses to meet the conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO) approach. Our ongoing study indicates that the CDIO approach can be applied to balance learning pedagogical fundamentals, training technological skills, and teaching practice. The study provides indications that learning activities in the courses facilitate development of visual literacy skills.
This case study presents a cocurricular initiative at the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University Libraries in New Brunswick, NJ. The initiative resulted in an interview workshop for the course Knowledge and Power, a “mission course” of the Douglass Residential College. This discussion-based workshop uses visual and multimedia resources to teach useful skills for conducting meaningful interviews, develops deeper understanding of an interview as a two-way social interaction composed of listening and talking, cultivates ethnographic and cultural sensitivity, and empowers students to critically engage with visual forms of communication and the meanings of media.
The role of data literacy is discussed in the light of such activities as data a quality, data management, data curation, and data citation. The differing terms and their relationship to the most important literacies are examined. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
In collaboration with students and faculty, the Library of Architecture, Design and Construction at Auburn University developed an interdisciplinary Materials Laboratory that offers students in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction a hands-on and interdisciplinary sensory experience of building and construction materials. Materials research is a key component to students’ learning in design disciplines, and the tactile and visual experience of handling physical building materials samples allows students to investigate and discover materials in new ways. This article explores the collaborative creation of the Materials Lab that positioned the library as a central and innovative educational resource for all design disciplines.
This article examines visual literacy education and research for library and information science profession to educate the information professionals who will be able to execute and implement the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Visual Literacy Competency Standards successfully. It is a continuing call for inclusion of visual literacy into the curriculum for library and information science education and research in order to educate students to provide professional services in this visual information world and it is a call for a paradigm shift from text-based information services and research realm to a social construction of meaning, reading, searching, finding meaning in a visual information world.
This article discusses the partnership between the library and the studio art faculty that led to the integration of information literacy instruction into the studio art curriculum. The author outlines the importance of information literacy to artistic practice and student success, and discusses the program of instruction and learning outcomes. Early assessment of student needs and the program’s effectiveness, using both citation analysis and anecdotal feedback, reveals that the program has contributed to the maturation of student research and inquiry skills, and positively affected the relationship between the department and the library, and provides preliminary conclusions about undergraduate studio art information behaviors. An ongoing further program of study to more fully describe the information needs of undergraduate studio art students is also outlined.
This chapter describes our instruction efforts concerning Google Images, a specialized search engine. We were inspired to teach Google Images to an academic audience by our experiences in the Power Searching with Google MOOC, Google’s effort to improve searchers’ understanding of their platform’s capabilities, and by our academic community’s interest in finding images for coursework, presentations, publications, and other scholarly activities.
Utilizing Google Apps in library instruction can help librarians easily incorporate digital literacy into their information literacy lessons. This chapter, informed by the experiences of three Eastern Kentucky University reference and instruction librarians, covers the basic functionality of Google Apps such as Google Drive (including Google Docs, Google Forms and Google Spreadsheets), Google Groups, Google Hangouts, etc., and some possibilities and advantages for creatively employing these apps to enhance face-to-face and online library instruction, as well as to aid in assessment.
The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education presents guidelines for educators and provides a scientific framework in which students can acquire visual literacy skills and use visual media in a critical way throughout their professional career. The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education was composed by the American Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). By means of these standards, the members of the association identified the domains of visual literacy and specified what learning outcomes could enable students to acquire visual literacy skills. The present paper is a discussion of the extent to which the Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education can be met.
This article discusses visual literacy, its connection to information literacy, and its significance to scientific disciplines. It includes a case study from Washington and Lee (W&L) University that showcases how libraries can integrate visual literacy instruction into STEM courses. In the study, two W&L Library staff members partnered with one W&L visiting assistant professor of physics to transform a common assignment, the academic poster, into a digital form of visual communication. This shift resulted in a revised evaluative rubric and led to enhanced library led instruction focusing on information literacy, visual literacy, and digital literacy skills.
Visual literacy is a crucial skill for today’s university students and faculty. Thus, it is essential for academic librarians to have an understanding of basic issues surrounding use and discovery of images. This chapter defines visual literacy, explores potential visual needs across subject disciplines, discusses search strategies for images, describes potential roles
for academic librarians related to visual literacy, discusses ethical concerns regarding images, lists visual literacy competencies and selected resources on visual literacy, and indicates where to locate images.
Academic art museums have been developing and using pedagogic approaches that support learning in the museum for many years. As with many teaching and learning practices, these have shifted from curator-centered lecturing to visitor-centered active learning techniques. Concern for how learning in the art museum can leverage learning outside of the museum (what we here refer to as learning through the museum) is a more recent consideration taken up by museum directors, curators, university teaching and learning centers, and individual faculty members.
The University of South Africa (Unisa), is an open and distance learning institution in a developing country. Technological development provides a wide range of distance learning technologies as a means of addressing the educational needs of distance learning users. This paper reflects on the importance of visual literacy for instructional design, as well as for teaching and learning strategies used in the Department of Geography at Unisa. The reflection aims at creating new opportunities for the development of visual literacy.