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Are we all a little over-confident about the graphics we use to promote learning? Today’s guest, Elizabeth Boling, has done research that demonstrates we are. We assume that people can understand our intent in the instructional graphics that we or others produce. But this is not always the case.
Elizabeth is a professor of instructional systems technology in the School of Education at Indiana University. Her resume includes 10 years of design practice, five of which were at Apple. She was editor-in chief at Tech Trends and is founding editor and current editor-in-chief of International Journal of Designs for Learning,
WE DISCUSS:
- How people interpret instructional graphics and illustrations versus what the designer intended
- How people decode graphics
- Visual literacy and instructional graphics
- How text augments visuals
- Why schools should be teaching students how to create graphics
- Decoding icons and information graphics
- Importance of testing instructional graphics on users
- Some criteria for when graphics are needed to enhance learning
- When graphics may detract from learning
TRANSCRIPT: Download the ELC 054 Transcript
RATE: Rate this podcast in iTunes
TIME: 30 minutes
RESOURCES:
- elizabethboling.com
- International Journal of Designs for Learning
- Studio Teaching in Higher Education
- Instructional Illustrations: Intended Meanings and Learner Interpretations
- List of Elizabeth’s research papers
- Yes, Icons Need Labels (related to the conversation)
- Using Graphics to Improve Learning
- 10 Books of Visual Ideas
Your story made me truly LOL. Thanks, Nancy.
Connie
For some reason…this presentation reminded of a story told by my professor in our Instructional Design program.
Years ago some American Farmers were assisting farmers in an African country with the installation of a modern irrigation system. The instructional video illustrating how to build the system was video recorded on a thriving American farm. When the video lesson was shown to the foreign farmers and a post test of their understanding was given, most farmers were more interested and concerned about the large chickens they saw free ranging in the farm yard. They wanted to know how the farmers raised such plump chickens!
Thanks very much for your kind words, Kim! Time to set up podcasts for the rest of the year 🙂
Connie
Thank you to Elizabeth. I love your guests Connie. I have just started listening to your podcasts. Each of your guests have expertly unpacked the science behind their disciplines. But your questions Connie sets the scene for great some great listening. Looking forward to the next podcast.
Best wishes
Kim
Hi Stephanie,
I agree with Elizabeth’s point that visual literacy should be started earlier in the schools. I’m guessing that if you research this, you could find some curriculum for it. I am not that plugged in to what’s going on in K-12 so don’t know for sure.
Connie
I really agree with your point that schools should be teaching students how to create graphics earlier and more comprehensively. There seems to be an avenue here for creating curriculum content in this area. Perhaps there are some that exist that I don’t know about.
I’m glad you loved the interview and you make some really interesting points, Miriam. I think you are right about the emoji connection to visual literacy. I do think visual literacy is much broader than that, but there must be a new visual literacy developing among those who grow up using ipads and mobile phones. It is ironic that we are kind of going back to hieroglyphs in some ways. I’m guessing you are familiar with the noun project (nounproject.com). There you can find a wonderful visual language, including visuals that don’t quite make it. It’s fascinating. Thanks for contributing.
Connie
Hi Connie, I loved this interview, it provided lots of food for thought (and mild alarm when I think about my use of graphics!).
One aspect discussed was the need for society to teach more visual literacy from a young age. It made me muse about the fact that widespread and increasing use of emoticons is creating a universal (global!) set of icons and visual associations. Social media culture is potentially gradually galvanizing us around an extensive library of visual representations that are more or less universally understood, from childhood.
I saw something else that pointed out that human communication has taken centuries to progress from hieroglyphs to written then typed alphabets, to speech recognition/predictive text and now essentially back to hieroglyphs!
At any rate, I wonder if the next generation *is* learning a new type of global graphic literacy that will become useful shorthand for designers in the future.
Thanks for providing your insights and sharing the questions you are reflecting on. It certainly seems like a little more testing of our visual language could only help to reduce misinterpretation. If you try it, you will either be validated and continue on the same path or you will find out that you need to modify things and improve your work. You can’t lose either way 🙂
Connie
Elizabeth articulate something that’s been rattling around in my brain for a while: “images are inherently open to multiple interpretations”.
I’ve seen people use icons instead of bullets in a list to symbolically represent the point being made. I wasn’t quite sure if they were just “pretty-ing” up a text heavy list, but if in adding text to augment the visual they disambiguated it, then maybe that approach was OK.
Most SMEs don’t question icon selections, but from time to time I’ve had a SME take great exception to an icon because it didn’t represent the concept they were trying to convey.
To counter that mistake, I have now learned I need to test my choices on many people, not just one, but more importantly, possibly try explaining my visual language in a short “How to read the visuals” guide.
Most of the time, though, I’m writing technical job aids, and it seems the visual language in them is more universally known. For example, it seems that as long as the screen capture represents the item referred to in the text and if I associate the step number with a number place next to the screen element I’m referring to, the user understands what they are supposed to do in the application. Now I’m questioning that assumptions and wondering if learner reviews might improve them!
Thanks for a thought-provoking podcast!