Visuals can be considered to be “real” as in photographs and slides. Visuals can also be pictorial or diagrammatical representations of “real” objects.
For instructional purposes, you can use visuals to illustrate objects and ideas, identify objects, show relationships between objects and ideas, classify objects, show spatial relationships, teach psychomotor skills that do not need to be recognized or copied, and help teach attitudes. You can also use visuals to make abstract concepts concrete. For example, you can do this by graphically showing the relationship between interest rates and the time required to pay off a mortgage. When you design online lessons follow the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” You should consider combining visuals with text to provide practice and feedback, as text alone does not suffice in many cases. If you teach with visuals, you should likely include visuals in practice and feedback as well as testing.
Note that some learners have difficulty learning from abstract sources such as text, numbers, and symbols. Visuals are an alternative that can help these learners. Similarly, you can help these learners by presenting data with graphs and charts.
Compared to only using text, visuals combined with text reduce the learning time and help students acquire and retain information. Visuals provide an alternate learning path since certain parts of the brain process visuals while different parts process text.
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In general, adding visuals leads to increased learning.
Visuals are particularly valuable when you direct learners to focus their attention on specific details, which you can do through concise prompts or captions. A combination of text and visuals can result in a 15 to 50 percent increase in recall over either alone. Recall is increased for both simple skills, such as recalling facts, and complex skills, like performing operations. Lessons with visuals result in higher retention over long time periods (i.e., months). Visuals particularly benefit weak learners. Also, they can be mentally processed much faster than text. Students may be better able to transfer the skills learned to other situations.
In general, visuals can be valuable learning tools. Some ideas cannot be adequately expressed in words but can be readily depicted with visuals. How could you adequately describe the surface of Venus or the structure of DNA without a visual? Look at Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\). Think about the words you would use to describe what this rhinoceros looks like. If the learner has not seen one before, with those words and without seeing a visual, could learners accurately envision the rhinoceros? For online applications, visuals can be particularly effective if students can control the length of time the visual remains on the screen, in other words proceed when they are ready.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Hard to describe visual
Note that in some cases, a visual drawn by an artist may be more effective than a real image. Some learners may not be able to focus on all of the details that real images sometimes provide. In a related way, people will usually recognize a cartoonist’s sketch of a hand as being a hand faster than a digitized image of a hand, even if a cartoonist’s sketch of a hand has three fingers. Simultaneously look at Figures \(\PageIndex{2}\) and \(\PageIndex{3}\). Which do you more quickly recognize as a hand? Since complex visuals require more time to mentally process than simple images, provide simple images (where appropriate).
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Cartoon handFigure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Digitized hand
On screens with text and visuals, learners are naturally drawn to the visuals. As a minimum, your visuals will add variety to screens. Although irrelevant visuals do not help students learn relevant content, some images (e.g., humorous) can help “lighten” the material. Screen variety can increase attention and motivation and consequently indirectly affect learning positively.
Keeping the Message of Your Visual Clear
To keep the message clear, your visuals should be self-explanatory, have labels, and only include relevant information!
Visuals should be self-explanatory
Self-explanatory visuals illustrate the message. If the image is not self-explanatory then you should determine how it could be done. At times, this goal may not be possible but you should at least aim for it. However, be sure to provide an explanation to link the visual to the idea you are conveying.
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As a rule, ensure your visuals are self-explanatory.
You should use the following methods to ensure message clarity:
Keep the visual simple and only include essential information. For example, crop images to eliminate unnecessary details. Complex visuals can weaken the instruction by confusing or distracting the students.
Match the visual’s complexity to the learner’s skill. Overly complex visuals are often ignored.
Consider using simple diagrams instead of realistic images. Realistic images sometimes contain so much detail that the learner is distracted from understanding the message.
Use a series of diagrams rather than a single complicated diagram. When explaining a process, use one visual per step. One technique you can use is to gradually build the visual from screen to screen.
Add labels to diagrams to highlight key points. Horizontal labels are the easiest to read.
Only include information relevant to the visual
If you include extra information, you could clutter the visual and can cause confusion. On screens that build, some of the previous information may need to be erased or de-highlighted so that new key points are easily found. Build the visuals in logical straightforward sequential steps. Plan to allow the learner the capability to reverse the steps for easy review.
