Visuals for Teaching and Learning Research

Introduction

This chapter will explore the following questions:

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  How are visuals effectively used in research, generally speaking?

  • o

    How are visuals used in back-end design? In raw ways? In private ways?

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    How are visuals used for public viewing and elicitations? In public ways?

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  In terms of learning-related research, how can visuals be used to convey information,? Communicate branding? Differentiate between learning contents? Appeal to learners? Elicit information and feedback? Deal with spatiality? Engage with aesthetics?

Figure 1.

A Word Cloud of Chapter 9­

It is highly rare to begin an instructional design project with all necessary information at the beginning of the project. What is more typical is that there may be some authorizing documents and requests for the project, and then, one has to research information about the domain, relevant technologies, the learners, and other relevant targets. The research usually continues through the build, with focuses on pilot testing developed objects, and all the way until the learning contents are refined and finalized and deployed. And even then, there is often analysis of whether the newer learning designs are conducive to learning. Part of closing the loop on an instructional design is to assess what was done well and what can be improved in the future. This last chapter focuses on the uses of visuals for teaching and learning research, in every form. (Figure 2)

Figure 2.

Topic Sequence in Visual Approaches to Instructional Design, Development, and Deployment

Visuals are thought of here as both those that inform the design and development, often used as raw files in a private sense, and then also in development and deployment, often used as more finished and polished files in a public sense. Also, these visuals are both still and moving ones. This work will address the following questions.

• •

  How are visuals effectively used in research, generally speaking?

  • o

    How are visuals used in back-end design? In raw ways? In private ways?

  • o

    How are visuals used for public viewing and elicitations? In public ways?

• •

  In terms of learning-related research, how can visuals be used to convey information,? Communicate branding? Differentiate between learning contents? Appeal to learners? Elicit information and feedback? Deal with spatiality? Engage with aesthetics?

As visuals predated language, perhaps a sort of “return” to visuals may evoke different insights, to complement those elicited from textual and other means.