Contemporary culture is a visual culture. Visual images become the predominant form of communication. Students should be visually literate and be able to read and use visual language, to decode, interpret and evaluate visual messages successfully, and, last but not least, to encode and compose meaningful visual communication. The combination of modeling with other methods in scientific knowledge increases its potential as a cognitive method. Infographics can play a significant role in the process as tool or target according to the age and cognitive abilities of the students.
Students interact with information in many ways throughout the day, code switching between modes depending on their needs. Educators are finally realizing that composing in more than one mode is not only important, but also necessary. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the academic library, the ACRL Framework and information literacy instruction in creating ethical, inspired users. This paper looks at previously published work on multimodal discourse, how libraries have supported modes in the past and how the ACRL Information Literacy Framework highlights the need to teach students and faculty how to compose in many modes.
Four colleagues–a faculty member, a digital services librarian, a research librarian, and a curator of Special Collections–take turns describing their role in creating an undergraduate student project around an eighteenth-century almanac that belonged to Marie-Antoinette. In recounting the steps taken, the collaborative process, the student research, and the analysis of the contents of the Trésor des Grâces almanac, we share the lessons learned for completing a digital exhibit over the course of one semester.
Regardless of institutional type or resources, one question facing archives and special collections is how archival collections can be efficiently enhanced with minimal or no original metadata. This issue becomes a focal point when collections are digitized, as metadata is what makes digital collections more accessible and usable. This case study explores the development of a digital collection using card sorting activities and gamification techniques and analyzes the direct and indirect effects of each strategy, including student employee connections to library learning goals and visual literacy standards.
This article presents the authors’ efforts to collaborate with faculty in a curriculum-mapping program that enables shared understanding of curricular objectives and goals. By collaborating and coordinating with faculty for embedded library sessions or modules, this program can be used to strengthen information and research competencies at the appropriate academic levels throughout the degree program. Curriculum mapping helps communicate opportunities to bring together teaching and learning from the lecture hall and studio to the library where students can be introduced to pertinent resources and information that will support their course work and build their understanding of research.
In an effort to advance visual literacy (VL) education, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a VL instruction program for 2.5-4-year-old children in a public library setting. The study was designed as a series of VL workshops for young public library visitors. Each workshop collected information about children’s existing VL knowledge, introduced them to new visual concepts, and measured their engagement and comprehension of the newly acquired material. The study data were collected via questionnaires and observations.
Archival instruction pedagogy is shifting from traditional lecture-based show-and-tell approaches to more active hands-on strategies that fall within the realm of active or inquiry-based instruction. Archivists are beginning to assess their instruction sessions using reaction assessments, learning assessments, performance assessments, and blended approaches; gathering data to illustrate the efficacy of the instruction pedagogy employed and thereby shedding light on how archives contribute in meaningful ways to student learning.
New image citation standards need to be developed for college and graduate students to meet visual literacy standards. The MLA Handbook, 8th edition, and Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, do not adequately clarify how to caption, attribute, and cite images. Other image captioning and citing resources are available, but they refer to the MLA and Chicago manuals. Image captions from scholarly journals vary widely and cannot be used as examples for students to follow. Recommendations are also provided for future editions of the MLA Handbook and Chicago Manual of Style.
The London College of Communication (LCC) Zine Collection was founded in July 2009 and now contains more than 4,000 zines. It is the most heavily used special collection at LCC Library. This article outlines the history and development of the collection, its uses in teaching, learning and research, and its value for widening access to, and representing diversity in an academic library environment.
Tertiary students from non-English speaking backgrounds are often required to undertake preparatory language courses. Whilst these programs help them achieve an operational level of academic English, their curricula do not explicitly promote the development of essential 21st century visual literacy skills. Understandings of visual literacy in adult English language teaching seem to overly simplify it as using images to complement written texts, generally through the use of technologies. This article examines intersections between classroom practices, visual literacy and the use of digital technologies in English language courses for higher education.
Infographics have been frequently used in recent years with the purpose of the visual presentation of information. It is a visualisation method which aims at presenting any content with a visual composition, combining such elements as shapes, symbols, graphics, photographs, illustrations, and texts for the target audience. The purpose of this research is to develop an instructional design based on the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model of infographic design as well as the determination of student and teacher opinions on the usage of infographics in teaching.
In a four-session Summer Bridge programme, we experimented with new curricular and pedagogical ideas with a group of incoming freshmen. We developed the Comics-Questions Curriculum (CQC), which melds students’ question asking with a focus on comics. The purpose of this paper is to describe the rationale for and ongoing development of the CQC as well as the ways the CQC fosters engagement of students and librarians, builds upon students’ existing skills but propels them forward toward college-level work, and positions librarians as partners in students’ college work. Although it was designed for a specific purpose initially, the CQC in its current state is widely adaptable to other contexts beyond the original scope.
In this article, we use an interdisciplinary, short-term study abroad program in Berlin, Germany, “Memorializing the Holocaust,” as a case study to demonstrate the importance of incorporating visual literacy competencies into study abroad course curriculum. By focusing on visual literacy, the program helps students navigate beyond their initial touristic relationship to the iconic images and sites in Berlin, allowing them to re-envision and reflect upon their significance.
Due to the progressive visualization of everyday communication, it has become increasingly
important to understand images and think and learn in terms of images. Tere should not
be any surprise, therefore, that educators express a need to introduce visual literacy into the
curriculum. However, the concrete tools to address this need are still missing. Te variety
of visual methods and approaches provided by visual studies’ literature does not seem to be
particularly useful when applied to education. Terefore, I suggest that a focus on teaching the
interpretation of journalistic photographs is a crucial component of contemporary education,
because it develops students’ visual literacy skills while addressing current requirements
in Higher Education, which expect students to be able to interpret, use and create images.
In academic libraries, information literacy traditionally focuses on instruction sessions and classes, activities in library learning spaces, and interactions with librarians. Often overlooked but equally as important to augmenting the student experience is employment in academic libraries and its relationship to the development of information and other literacies. This is particularly true concerning the contribution of special collections and archives, as most scholarship associated with primary source literacy focuses on instruction. This article begins to fill this gap by reporting the results of a series of qualitative interviews with student employees who worked directly with special collections and archives.
While much has been written about implementing the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in various classroom settings, this article addresses mapping the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to the Framework in designing instruction for art and architecture students. Disciplinary lenses, allowing for an integrative, pragmatic heuristic, are coupled with an integration of approaches found in the library instruction literature, including faculty and librarian teaching partnerships and assessment. The versatility of mapping these professional documents is demonstrated through implementation in both one-shot and embedded instruction.
Visualizing Oral Histories: Comics and Graphic Novels/Digital Humanities Lab, is a new model for digital humanities scholarship that other librarians can follow to create and teach similar DH labs attached to humanities courses at other institutions. The model includes a preliminary syllabus and preliminary assignment rubrics designed to integrate the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” (ACRL Framework) into course assignments. Incorporation of a DH lab into a humanities course curriculum reimagines librarian roles and creates a pedagogical strategy that explicitly incorporates information literacy standards into the undergraduate course curriculum.
Are children competent producing anatomy cross-sections? To answer this question, we carried out a case study research aimed at testing graphic production skills in anatomy of nutrition. The graphics produced by 118 children in the final year of primary education were analysed. The children had to draw a diagram of a human cross section, integrating knowledge of anatomy acquired from longitudinal sections.
The quality of a data display can have an impact on the interpretation of those data. A survey of the literature indicates that data displays can vary in quality of accuracy, clarity, and efficacy. In this study we develop and apply an evaluative rubric to graphs in a sample of six education journals: three research and three practitioner. Results indicate that graph quality is typically high in educational journals, however, in practitioner oriented journals issues around graph clarity and efficacy should be addressed. Common error patterns are pinpointed, and four recommendations are made to authors and editors: focus on meaningful labels, increase amount of data displayed, portray multiple relationships, and elaborate with supporting text.
For this article, an architect and librarian teamed up to systemize the means of theoretical development in architectural design students through the use of visual culture (film). To achieve their goal, they used pedagogical criteria to measure and assess the accrual of visual skills. Architectural design education is inextricable from city-based exploration and research. Traces of how architecture is taught and evaluated are embedded in the built environment. Teaching strategies that guide the development of visual literacy skills are essential in order to optimize the learning experience. To effectively apply these strategies, professors and academic librarians need to work in close collaboration to strengthen their students’ visual skills.