Students learn better when the right kind of graphics are added to text. This page presents information on technical and instructional design issues involved in representing course content in a visual way.
Graphics are Useful
What kinds of visuals work well in instructional materials?
We all know that one of the major "value added" aspects of doing things digitally is the opportunity to include visuals with our materials, whether it be an online learning module or a powerpoint presentation. Tools abound.
If you've ever been on a website design committee, or tried to develop a powerpoint presentation that wasn't all bullet points and clipart, you're familiar with the challenge: We want to appeal to our audience in a visual way, break up or replace all the text, yet simply decorating the page or slide with decorative clipart doesn't help communicate what we want.
Turns out there are principles and best practices for developing graphics to support learning and communication. I've included a short list of my favorite books and resources below.
Tips for Using Graphics in Instructional Materials
- limit your use of "decorative" graphics. Decorative graphics can actually impede learning. (Mayer 2001)
- place graphic adjacent to text that refers to graphic (Mayer 2001)
- text captions near graphics are often helpful
In cases where you're talking about concrete objects, by all means include a picture of that object. But so often our course materials deal with more abstract ideas. My advice is: don't work too hard at trying to find a graphic to represent the idea. It will be hard to do, and will not be that effective for your learners.
For example, say you are putting together materials on e-learning. You might be tempted to try to represent the idea of e-learning -- maybe a picture of someone reading a computer screen, or a graphic showing computer-mediated communications, or the like. It will be hard, and it won't be immediately clear to learners, so it won't carry much of the "explanatory load" of your presentation. Understand that you're essentially working on a decorative graphic. :-)
Required Skills & Competencies
An instructor wishing to use explanatory graphics needs to know...
* how to obtain graphics
o from a web page
o as a "screenshot" of their computer screen
o from a clipart site
* how to manipulate graphics
o by resizing pictures
o by drawing arrows and boxes on graphics
* how to use graphics in their presentation environment, be it Powerpoint, a web page, or a handout.
Resources
- http://jimwitte.com/workshops/files/JimWitte_Graphics_Teaching-screen.pdf Jim Witte, Oct 4 2006 CITES EdTech Presentation Slides
- http://cmap.ihmc.us/Support//help/IHMCCmapTools-Help.pdf CMap Tools Help (.pdf)
- http://cmap.ihmc.us/videos/index.php CMap Tools Videos
- http://cmc.ihmc.us/papers/cmc2004-283.pdf CmapTools: A Knowledge Modeling and Sharing Environment, A. J. Cañas, G. Hill, R. Carff, N. Suri, J. Lott, T. Eskridge, G. Gómez, M. Arroyo, R. Carvajal, In: Concept Maps: Theory, Methodology, Technology, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Concept Mapping, A.J. Cañas, J.D. Novak, and F.M. González, Editors. 2004, Universidad Pública de Navarra: Pamplona, Spain. p. 125-133.
- http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderl... The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct Them J.D. Novak & A. J. Cañas, IHMC.
- http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ Other Publications
- http://gimp.org The GIMP: a free graphics program for windows, linux, and macintosh. GIMP for windows is at http://gimp.org/windows/.
- http://www.flickr.com Flickr: online service for organizing and sharing pictures. Free basic accounts, additional features available for pay accounts.
- http://picasa.google.com/ Picasa: free photo library software for Windows. From the fine folks at Google.
- http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/ iPhoto: photo library software for Macintosh, from Apple. Part of the iLife suite of programs that typically come bundled with Macs.
- http://plasq.com/ Comic Life: Excellent software for adding thought bubbles, speech bubbles, and comic-like photo layouts. Macintosh only.
Bibliography
- Alley, Michael. "Design of Presentation Slides". 2005. May 10 2005. http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/slides.html.
- Clark, Ruth Colvin, and Chopeta C. Lyons. Graphics for Learning: Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing, and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2004.
- Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2001.
- Mayer, Richard E. Multimedia Learning. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Norvig, Peter. "The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation". 2000. May 10 2005. http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm.
- Parker, Ian. "Absolute Powerpoint: Can a Software Package Edit Our Thoughts". 2001. May 10 2005. http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/intime/AbsolutePPT.pdf.
- Tufte, Edward. "Powerpoint Is Evil". 2003. (May 10, 2005): Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html.
