Among the most difficult aspects of building visual literacy is creating awareness of manipulation, a task made continuously harder by the prevalence of 'Photoshopped' or digitally altered photos through fake news or our everyday usage of photo editing apps. So how are educators to build awareness of visual literacy when manipulation has become…

The multitude of disciplines, perspectives, and practices that inform the study of visual literacy is incredibly valuable, but at the same time it means our research lacks a shared set of methodologies and methods. Unfamiliar research approaches may lead to mistrust of research findings and, even more problematic, to missed opportunities for…

The purpose of this position paper in to provide guidance on the creation and utilization of infographics for learning and instruction. The paper includes practical insights and provides a framework for the creation of infographics. The framework can be used by educators to create their own infographics for instructional and visual literacy…

Most individuals view the world through images and many share memories through social networking sites (SNSs) and other online spaces continuously. Due to the immense amount of communication through images, it is increasingly important to develop competencies in visual, media, and privacy literacy; therefore, this article presents Photovoice 2.0,…

By incorporating visual mapping into students' thinking and writing processes, a narrative assignment in geo-literacy creates a reflective and agency-based learning experience for student writers in a first-year honors seminar.

As digital technologies increase in their capacity to generate, display, and disseminate visual materials via spaces like social media, there is a need for pedagogical practices that support meaning making with visual texts. The purpose of this paper is to present a pedagogical framework for teaching visual literacies with social media memes using…

The paper considers the particular value of focusing on the look as a medium when studying visual cultures. This focus is helpful for coming to terms with distinct understandings of the visual. To address the look as a medium, four analytical dimensions are introduced for distinguishing among separate but closely interrelated visual phenomena: the…

The overarching goal of this review article is to discuss and provide evidence of ways that visual displays can be used to improve classroom thinking skills. Specifically, we attempt to first, provide a synthesis of the relationship among visual displays, visual literacy, and visual thinking. Second, we review the relatively scant educational…

The art of looking is a museum and art gallery teaching tool at the core of the Visual Thinking Strategies, a Harvard School of Education pedagogy initiated as an educational experiment for schools across the United States almost two decades ago. Today, a large number of schools implement this teaching method to increase student engagement in a…

This innovative teaching idea, the "Digital Image Guide" (DIG) Method, addresses the pressing need to develop visual pedagogies in the university classroom by providing a technique for students to use to critically read digital images. This article also introduces the concept of "shallow" and "deep images." It then…

In this photo elicitation assignment, each student must take, select, and interpret a picture about a social issue that he/she has learned about in class. The student must then craft either a sensory poem, or answer the SHOWeD questions as designed by Shaffer and modified by Wang, which facilitates the student's interpretation of the picture. As a…

"Vision and Change" identifies science communication as one of the core competencies in undergraduate biology. Visual representations are an integral part of science communication, allowing ideas to be shared among and between scientists and the public. As such, development of scientific visual literacy should be a desired outcome of…

Figure analysis is a novel active learning teaching technique that reinforces visual literacy. Small groups of students discuss diagrams in class in order to learn content. The instructor then gives a brief introduction and later summarizes the content of the figure. This teaching technique can be used in place of lecture as a mechanism to deliver…

The importance of images and visual media in today's culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and…

Electronically mediated technologies are prohibited from use in a major assessment component of a blended learning subject. This subject employs a multidisciplinary problem-based approach to explore international issues and perspectives using a rich blend of face-to-face, electronically mediated, individual and team-based activities. The…