Visual Practices in Learning & Teaching

Associate Professor Digby WarrenCentre for Enhancement of Learning & Teaching

London Metropolitan University

Images can be an effective way of presenting abstract concepts or groups of data. Instructors have reported that their use of images in the classroom has led to increased student interactivity and discussion. Teaching with images can also help develop students’ visual literacy skills, which contributes to their overall critical thinking skills and lifelong learning.

Adrienne Lai (2013) Teaching with Images(entry on The Innovative Instructor Blog, John Hopkins University: Baltimore)http://ii.library.jhu.edu/tag/adrienne-lai/

Drawing as learning

Visual representations of “curriculum”

Participants on LondonMetPGCert/MA in Learning & Teaching in HE course

Drawing to Learn • enhance engagement — when students draw to

explain they are more motivated to learn• learn to represent — process of producing visual

representations helps learners understand how scientific representations work

• learn to reason — student learn to reason, aligning their drawings with observation, measurement and/or emerging ideas

• a learning strategy —reading a text and then drawing it helps learning make their understanding visible, organise and integrate their knowledge

• communicate — a way that the peers can share knowledge, discovery and provides teachers with windows into students’ thinking

Ainsworth et al (2011) Drawing to Learn in Sciencehttp://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/research/drawingtolearn