The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments and educational institutions around the world to look for viable alternatives to campus-based education. However, pedagogical methods such as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) might need to be adapted to low-interactivity distance learning environments, such as datacasting. This paper describes VTS+, a…

This article describes a visual language comprised of abstract shapes that has been shown to be effective in communicating prior knowledge between and within members of a small team or group. The visual language includes a set of geometric shapes and rules that guide the construction of the abstract diagrams that are the external representation of…

Geometry is required for many secondary school students, and is often learned, taught, and assessed more in a heuristic image-based manner, than as a formal axiomatic deductive system. Students are required to prove general theorems, but diagrams are usually used. It follows that understanding how students engage in perceiving and reasoning about…

The goals of this study were to identify the constructs of visual literacy, to determine the amount of agreement or disagreement which exists concerning the identified constructs, and to provide a measure of relative importance among the identified constructs. The Delphi technique was employed to elicit information and opinions from a panel of…

People find difficulty in performing syllogistic reasoning. This paper outlines some reasons for poor syllogistic reasoning. Representational systems (RS) used in presenting and evaluating syllogisms can be distinguished in terms of attributes such as specificity, expressiveness, and abstraction. Graphical RSs have pedagogical potential because of…

Information graphics or diagrams are two-dimensional maps of relationships that present information. Creators and interpreters of diagrams need to know what makes some diagrams more effective in communicating information. This paper suggests a theoretical framework for diagram classification to make this possible. This framework consists of two…

Visual knowledge is an enormously important part of our total knowledge. The psychological study of learning and knowledge has focused almost exclusively on verbal materials. Today, the advance of technology is making the use of visual communication increasingly feasible and popular. However, this enthusiasm involves the illusion that visual…

In order to investigate the relative effectiveness of specific media attributes on student performance on criterion tests, a comparison was made of the effectiveness of two levels of stimulus explicitness in visuals in facilitating student achievement on criterion tests of knowledge, comprehension, and total understanding. Subjects were 171…

This study investigating the use of visual cueing strategies within a self-paced instructional unit employed and modified an instructional unit on the human heart developed by Francis M. Dwyer. This unit and its accompanying tests were designed to assess visual learning in terms of student achievement on drawing, identification, terminology, and…

This paper briefly reviews some of the literature on the use of visual imagery in the conceptualization and solution of mathematical problems, especially its use in the learning of mathematics by children, and notes that a mutually facilitative effect occurs between mathematics and visual aptitude. A bibliography, a short list of resource…

An experiment was conducted in which the relationships of basic television and film codes to particular literacy mental skills were examined. Different versions of the same film, each focusing on a different code, were produced and shown to fifth graders. It was found that children with initially better mastery of the relevant skills extract more…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which teachers and students can leverage the power and potential of visuals to encode information and experiences as personalized meanings, and to help people create their own timeless images as ways to understand the world. The foundation is laid for conducting research to test the assertion…

Visual compositions can be used in the content areas to address comprehension problems posed by implicit factors in any content theme. The importance of a visual presentation for writing is that it can instantly portray the theme to be learned and act as a catalyst to elicit words and sentences to help explain that content theme. Stages of…

A study tested two alternative theories about the role of color in visual learning: first, that color provides an additional dimension of realism which results in the learner attaining a more complete image of the object or event and second, that color functions only as a coding device which facilitates the storage and retrieval of the image. Two…

The effectiveness of elaborate visual cueing and reduced step size (i.e., increasing the number of visual cues) in facilitating student achievement on different instructional tasks was examined. The hypothesis proposed that instructional treatments utilizing reduced step size and elaborate visual cueing alone and in combination would be superior…