For the report, I wrote about visual learning:
For millennia, humans have told stories with pictures. Early written languages used pictographs, symbols that represent words. These evolved into the modern logographic languages of today.
Why do we communicate so well with pictures? Cognitive psychologists estimate that half the human brain is used directly or indirectly in processing visual information. In comparison, the areas of the brain used primarily to process language are quite small. We also process visual information very quickly. For example, people can determine in as little as 100 milliseconds whether a picture contains an image of an animal or not. That's about as fast as a blink of an eye.
Does this affect how we learn? Given a list of words to memorize, children find them hard to recall if they only repeat the words. But tell them to picture the items the words describe, their recall increases greatly, especially if the image they create is unusual.
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? You tell me. There are about 250 words on this page, but less than 20 pictures. Which will you remember tomorrow?
For the essay, I used one of the essay questions from the final exam in my PSY 102 class, and based the essay on a response from one of my students last semester. In my online classes, the midterm and final exam are all essay questions, and students have the question at the beginning of the course. This gives them lots of time to work on thoughtful responses:
What types or events or circumstances cause you stress? Can you identify specific stressors? Why do you think those stressors create stress for you?
There are three types of stressors, cataclysmic, personal and background. The flooding we had a few years ago was an example of a cataclysmic stressor. It affected lots of people, but we knew it would be over soon. I buried my father at a young age, lost several other loved ones. Those are examples of personal stressors. They were very stressful when they happened, but eventually, the level of stress gradually tapered off. On the other hand, background stressors always seem to be there. One major background stressor for me is financial security, i.e. money. Unlike dealing with death, the need for money has no end.
I think that much of the financial stress I endure is a result of my childhood, when I observed my parents always being concerned about money. I am by no means poverty stricken, but I am not yet affluent either.
Pick one item that causes you stress, and describe one emotion-focused coping response and one problem-focused coping response you could try to use to lower your stress.
One emotion-focused way I could deal with financial stress would be to talk it over with my wife instead of pretending it isn't a problem. She might be able to help me think more rationally about money, pointing out all the things we have and can do instead of stressing out about things we don't have.
One problem-focused coping response that I use is when I feel stressed about my finances, I engage in activities that are free or inexpensive, such as staying home for dinner instead of going out.
In both cases, I tried to convey my message as much with images as possible, using the text to support the visuals. What I found was I thought about the message I wanted to convey much more deeply when I conveyed it with both words and pictures than I did with words alone. For example, as I write this blog, it is very easy to keep adding more words to try to express my thoughts. But to try to find an image to get the same message across takes effort and requires that I actually think deeply about what I want to say...or show.
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| By HikingArtist [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons |
Most students will not have any experience creating a visual essay, but that can be a good thing. Anything that is novel can gain someone's attention, so offering a novel way to write an essay just must inspire them to spend more effort on it. The downside is they might need instruction on how to create a visual essay. However, the format is the same as a regular essay, and there are free tools like Adobe Spark to handle the technical aspects easily.
Visual reports and essays will never take the place of the traditional written report or essay. Students will still need to construct an essay appropriately and be able to communicate in writing, as well as do and cite the necessary research. When most communication was in print, that was particularly important.
But now, visual communication skills are becoming more important, particularly in business. Whether it is a web site, social media posts, or even printed brochures, we encounter increasing amounts of visual information every day. We should start encouraging the use of the skills in our assessment of student learning.
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