Visual Learning 

A mural made my children at the Bifrost School, Denmark about Leonadrdo da Vinci. In the centre is Leonardo himself, holding an eye. Copied from C. Verheij. (2004). A glowing experiment, in Resurgence, No.  226, p. 42.

 Visual learning is inviting and stimulating. When words and pictures are combined, it enhances our ability to think and communicate. The Web offers an environment in which both words and images can be readily shared, and new tools and techniques for visual learning. This design pattern helps to learners to manage information overload. It facilitates INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES. Visual Learning engages conscious and unconscious processes and, as students become absorbed in creating their own visual content, it encourages the experience of FLOW.

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Visual images help to create a complex and motivating learning environment, but today’s educational software accommodates visual learning only with great difficulty.

Several authors (Peters, 2004; Kiili, 2005; Downes, 2004) comment on the failure of online instructional designers to truly utilize the capacities of the Internet. Too often, online instructional design mimics traditional teaching formulas – including text-based curriculum. Existing educational software tends to conform with and perpetuate this model by making image-sharing extremely arduous.

Integrating words and images can “eliminate roadblocks to complex thought” (Horn, 2001). Horn notes that integrated visual-verbal communication improves learning by large, measurable amounts (ranging from 23 to 89% in recent research). Visual images and words are processed in different brain hemispheres. Opening windows in the cathedral-like architecture of the brain can spark knowledge breakthroughs (Marchese, 1998). Horn posits that developing a visual-verbal language may increase our ability to take in, comprehend and synthesize large amounts of new information. Pinker (1999) confirms, “the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, most nonverbal. Contrary to widespread belief, we do not think exclusively in language.”

Copied from Evans, 2003: http://Website.lineone.net/~bryn_evans/hemispheres.gif

Visual language draws on both conscious and unconscious capacities. Images can allow us to develop complex understandings of multifaceted issues, and see problems from several viewpoints simultaneously. Paradoxically, visual images both simplify and complicate understanding. The word leaf generates a memory, generic outline, concept or stereotype. The image of a leaf generates a different kind of understanding. While immediately recognizable, a leaf image is singular and experiential, and emotional resonance, colour, and personal associations complicate our response.

Photo copied from Pinker, S. (n.d). http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/photos/cape_cod_II/pages/leaf%20litter.htm

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Use the Web’s capacity to create a rich visual environment for learning. Employ multiple approaches that can change with changing technology.

In 2006, such approaches might include: instructor-written texts that model the integration of images and text; incorporation of hosted photo-sharing applications (such as Flickr) into course design; image-rich printed course materials; assignments that include the production of visuals and encourage visual research; sharing images through an online gallery posted by the Webmaster; and the provision of easily accessible visual thinking tools (including collage and  Mind Mapping) to students.

Do not accept the notion that some people cannot produce visuals. Offer students GOOD TOOLS that facilitate the creation of images by non-artists; encourage and appreciate the diversity of images produced by students. Visual learning is supported by rich interactions with texts, so it is important to have well-designed, easily printable Web pages.

Friendship

Henri Matisse, Joy of Life, 1906.

(Retrieved online at : http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/matisse/matisse.bonheur-vivre.jpg)

Learners through the ages have been stimulated to their best by their relationships with one another. The affectional community we can develop in an educational setting is  rare; it allows the creative intimacy of working on projects together and discussing emerging ideas. Fellow learners can come to know each other in a way that is not just social, but also intellectual and generative. This pattern suggests that we design to create a context for friendship, using the capacities of the Web to allow gradations of intimacy. Relationships between students encourage student-created course content and QUESTIONING AUTHORITY of teachers. While each student may be separately engaged in traversing individual DESIRE LINES, it is essential to create multiple, mutually enhancing spaces in which varieties of friendship can evolve. Friendships also help to provide student support and manage teacher workload.

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Friendship is the vital sap of life and learning. People cannot develop friendships if the communities of practice they inhabit allow no space and time for developing friendships.

And for many learners, friendship is the most enduring aspect of their face-to-face studies. Online learning can mean a substandard education wherein students are isolated – with no opportunity for developing relationships, and no student activism, student support services, or cross-disciplinary dialogue over coffee and beer. For Versluis, (2004), the loss of education’s vital social dimensions make online educational institutions no more than “degree-delivery machine[s]” (p. 46). But is it necessary to conceive of online learners as socially isolated?

In fact, the Web allows new opportunities for relationship. In the vast and richly complicated environment of the Internet, everyone can find a kindred spirit. People whose work or family commitments allow little time for face-to-face friendship can communicate with online friends in the unpredictable moments their lives allow. The Web allows a degree of anonymity, privacy and distance that may actually facilitate personal disclosure. Email, open public forums, private group forums and other communication tools allow different degrees of intimacy. Text messages can easily be ignored and deleted; in an online environment we need not fear becoming encumbered with unhappy relationships.

In recent years, there has been an evolution in social computing that Downes (2004) sees as a real paradigm shift. The Web has changed from a medium in which information was “transmitted and consumed” to one in which content is “created, shared, remixed, repurposed and passed along.” Rather than reading the Web as a book, people on the Internet are having a conversation with both words and images. The Web is now a social network, which Downes notes has its educational parallel in the notion of communities of practice. This theory posits that learning occurs through participation in the multiple, competing communities to which we all belong – ranging from family through class, race, nation and professional identity. And although apprenticeship has been the dominant model for understanding how people learn in communities of practice, friendship (including peer support, mentoring, peer conflict and consensus) is an equally important element of learning in such communities.

Create easily accessible spaces for varieties of friendship and spaces that allow friendships to evolve over time. Relate course materials and discussion to students’ lives to build social recognition of their individual strengths and capacities. Assign student-created course content, and teach students to respond to each other’s content as Critical Friends. Encourage (but do not require) mentoring, personal correspondence and group projects. Craft guided discussion forums with care; understand them as critical spaces of learning. Create an institute-wide, open public forum to allow classmates to meet again after the course is over.

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Friendship skills cannot be assumed; they need to be built with GOOD TOOLS including Student Profiles, instructions on how to act as a “Critical Friend”, an organized program of Mentoring, and student support services for those needing more assistance than online friends or mentors can provide.