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he problem ofthe twenty-first centuryis the problemof the image,"accordingto cultural

theorist W.J.T. Mitchell (1995). Thecenturies-long domination of textsand words in culture, particularlyWestern culture, has come to an end.The new "pictorial turn" means thatimages no longer exist primarily toentertain and illustrate. Rather they arebecoming central to communicationand meaning-making.

Mitchell wrote about a culturesaturated with images in print, televi-sion, film, and public spaces. He didnot fully anticipate how, and howquickly, evolving technologies wouldtransform our visual environment. Thecamera, for example, was not so longago a specialized device that, exceptin hands of experts, produced low-quality pictures seen by few people.Now digital cameras are just anothercomponent in many electronic devices,and images are created to be uploadedrather than printed. The four-year oldphoto-sharing Web site Flickr includesmore than two billion images, and injust one recent month (January 2008),more than 79 million viewers watched3 billion videos on the three-year-oldsite YouTube.

This visual explosion is not onlya popular-culture phenomenon. Vastscholarly archives-including theARTstor Digital Library (www.artstor.org), NASA's Visible Earth collec-tion (visibleearth.nasa.gov), and theAmerican Memory site at the Libraryof Congress (memory.loc.gov)-makehigh-quality visual materials availableto students, teachers, and researcherseverywhere.

Our visual, screen-based world isthe natural environment for many oftoday's college students. Our technol-

Peter Felten is associate professor and di-rector of the Center for the Advancement ofTeaching and Learning at Elon University.

ogy and culture, some would argue,are producing a large crop of visuallearners-"digital natives" who are"intuitive visual communicators" and" more visually literate than previousgenerations" (Oblinger and Oblinger,2005, ch. 2).

Living in an image-rich world, how-ever, does not mean students (or facultyand administrators) naturally possesssophisticated visual literacy skills, justas continually listening to an iPod doesnot teach a person to critically analyzeor create music. Instead, visual literacyinvolves the ability to understand, pro-duce, and use culturally significant im-ages, objects, and visible actions. Theseskills can be learned in ways analogousto textual literacy. With training andpractice, people can develop the abilityto recognize, interpret, and employ thedistinct syntax and semantics of differ-ent visual forms. The process of becom-ing visually literate continues througha lifetime of learning new and moresophisticated ways to produce, analyze,and use images.

Visual literacy has appeared onthe margins of the national discourseabout liberal education. The AAC&U'sGreater Expectations report (2002),for instance, contended that one of thecore characteristics of an "empoweredlearner" would be the capacity to "ef-fectively communicate orally, visually,in writing, and in a second language"(xi). In the AAC&U's follow-up report,Liberal Education Outcomes (2005),however, references to the visual disap-peared, although two new literacies,quantitative and information, nowcomplement "written and oral commu-nication" as essential intellectual andpractical skills.

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This proliferation of literacies, andthe emergence of new technologies thatblend text and image, suggest that thetime is right to rethink the very conceptof literacy. Gunther Kress, in Literacyin the New Media Age (2003), contendsthat multiple "modes of representa-tion" should replace language at thecore of any understanding of literacy.In other words, being literate necessar-ily involves understanding much morethan words and texts. James Paul Gee'sstimulating What Video Games Have toTeach Us about Learning and Literacy(2004) makes a similar argument forwhat he calls the "multimodal prin-ciple," that "meaning and knowledgeare built up through various modalities(images, texts, symbols, interactions,abstract design, sound, etc.), not justwords" (p. 210).

In our rapidly changing world, vi-sual literacy, whether conceptualizedas a distinct set of capacities or as partof a larger multimodal literacy, shouldbe recognized among the fundamentalgoals of a liberal education.

The following review will highlightfour categories of resources essentialfor understanding visual literacy inhigher education: foundations, visualcognition and perception, visual design,and teaching visual literacy.

FOUNDATIONSHumans have created images to con-

vey meaning for thousands of years, butthe idea of educating people for visualliteracy developed over the past centuryconcurrently with new communicationstechnologies. In the late 1960s JohnDebes from Eastman Kodak coinedthe term "visual literacy" and, with adiverse group of academics as partners,

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VISUAL LITERACYBy PETER FELTEN

hosted the first national conference onthe topic. This group soon evolved intothe International Visual Literacy As-sociation (www.ivla.org), which hostsan annual conference and sponsors aWeb portal (www.ivla.org/portal/intro)that provides links to relevant research,teaching materials, publications, collec-tions, and other resources.

The connection between visual liter-acy and emerging technologies persists.EDUCAUSE (www.educause.edu/), aleading higher education associationfocused on technology, has made visualliteracy an important part of its agenda.Susan E. Metros and Kristina Woolsey,writing in the EDUCAUSE Review(2006), offer a succinct argument forwhy visual literacy should be "an in-stitutional imperative." Another inter-national consortium of academics andtechnologists, the New Media Consor-tium (www.nmc.org), has drawn on thescholarship of Kress, Gee, and others toproduce an extended argument that thedevelopment of multimodal literacy isnow "A Global Imperative" for highereducation (www.nmc.org/pdf/GlobalImperative.pdf). The Horizon Report,produced annually by EDUCAUSE andthe New Media Consortium, anticipateshow emerging technologies will affecthigher education. As in past years, the2008 report focuses on how Web 2.0tools for video, data visualization, andmultimedia "mash-ups" will require"formal instruction in information, vi-sual, and technological literacy."

The Cambridge Handbook of Mul-timedia Learning (2005), edited byRichard E. Mayer, summarizes theeducationally relevant research onhow people learn in multimodal envi-ronments; although the volume doesnot focus on visual literacy per se, itis an essential resource. For example,Mayer's chapter on the "CognitiveTheory of Multimedia Learning"clearly explains both the scienceand the implications of "the humaninformation processes system [that]includes dual channels for visual/pic-torial and auditory/verbal processing"(p. 31).WWW.CHANGEMAG.ORG

For a theoretical overview of thestate of the field, James Elkins' has ed-ited a volume, Visual Literacy (2007),that brings together major thinkers toconsider what the concept means indiverse contexts around the globe andacross the disciplines. The volume fo-cuses primarily on cultural studies, but

Elkins makes a powerful plea to "takeup the challenge of providing a visualculture 'core curriculum' for all stu-dents. Images are central to our lives,and it is time they become central inour universities" (p. 8).

VISUAL COGNITIONAND PERCEPTION

The study of the physical processesinvolved in visual perception has bothencouraged and reinforced advocates ofvisual literacy. Research demonstratesthat seeing is not simply a process ofpassive reception of stimuli but alsoinvolves active construction of mean-ing. A typical person, for example,

perceives a line drawing of a cube tohave three dimensions; our eyes projectdepth onto a flat surface by assemblinga familiar shape from a two-dimen-sional drawing on a sheet of paper. Pro-ponents of visual literacy contend thatif the physical act of seeing involves ac-tive construction, then the intellectualact of interpreting what is seen mustrequire a critical viewer.

The study of the physiological andcognitive systems involved in visualperception is one of the burgeoningareas in neuroscience. Dale Purves andR. Beau Lotto (2003) offer an acces-sible peek into this vast field in Why WeSee What We Do: An Empirical Theoryof Vision. Scientists will continue todebate Purves and Lotto's thesis thatthe visual system generates a "statisti-cal reflection of visual history" ratherthan an accurate representation of thephysical world, but since no generallyaccepted framework for understand-ing the visual system exists, the clarityand comprehensiveness of Purves andLotto's book make it valuable to thoseoutside the field.

Echo Objects: The Cognitive Workof Images, by Barbara Maria Stafford(2007), takes a different view into thescience of sight. Stafford, an art histo-rian, has studied neuroscience deeply.Echo Objects makes the compelling, ifjargon-heavy, argument that since think-ing is inextricably linked to images,understanding human cognition requiresthe integration of science and art.

VISUAL DESIGNJust as writing is essential to textual

literacy, the capacity to manipulate andmake meaning with images is a corecomponent of visual literacy. Techno-logical change has made it increasinglypossible for ordinary people, not just pro-fessionals, to become visual designers.Indeed, editing with a particular graph-ics program has become so common asto create a new verb, "to photoshop,"that means to digitally alter an image.Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish'sGraphic Design History: A CriticalGuide (2008), a widely used college text,

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is an excellent introduction to both the ba-sic principles and the historical evolutionof visual design.

Edward Tufte, a professor emeritusat Yale, has developed a large followingfor his elegant, practical, and pointedviews on the visual display of quantita-tive data. His workshops and books,including The Visual Display of Quan-titative Information (2nd ed., 2001),should appeal most to professionals inbusiness, engineering and the sciences.Tufte's most recent volume, BeautifulEvidence (2006), includes a chapterbased on his influential article, "TheCognitive Style of PowerPoint," thatcontends that "PowerPoint, comparedto other presentation tools, reduces theanalytical quality of serious presenta-tions of evidence" (p. 157).

Despite the harsh critique, manyacademics rely on PowerPoint andother software to create, manipulate,and present visuals. Many campusesand technology groups (such as EDU-CAUSE) offer or broker training inthese technologies. For example, theUniversity of Minnesota's Center forTeaching and Learning hosts a freeonline tutorial about "Active Learningwith PowerPoint" (www 1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint). Lynda(www.lynda.com) is a corporation withan excellent reputation for online tutori-als on the tools and techniques com-monly used for visual design.

TEACHING VISUAL LITERACYSchools have traditionally placed

primary emphasis on textual literacy.Our pedadogy and academic trainingoften focus on words and texts as thesource of knowledge. As Carmen Luke(2003) explains in a provocative articleon pedagogy and multimodality, theclassroom is perhaps the only placewhere today's students are not "blend-ing, mixing, and matching knowledgedrawn from diverse textual sources andcommunication media" (p. 398).

Although a vast literature exists onteaching visual literacy in pre-colle-giate settings, relevant higher educationliterature is only now emerging. Many

of the leading books on pedagogy inhigher education make at most a pass-ing reference to visual-literacy con-siderations, in effect treating imagesas mere illustrations and ignoring themyriad of ways people make meaningby combining visuals and texts. Oneexception is James E. Zull's The Art of

Changing the Brain (2002). Zull drawson "the biology of learning" to arguethat faculty should make "extensive useof images to help people learn," both byteaching with visuals and by requiringstudents to use various visual forms torepresent what they know.

Models for doing this recently havebegun appearing in many disciplines,building in part on new visualiza-tion technologies being developed asresearch tools. Perhaps the clearestexample of this is the Spatial Perspectives on Analysis for CurriculumEnhancement (SPACE) program.Drawing on advances in geographic in-formation systems and spatial analysis

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tools, SPACE's web site (www.csiss.org/space) offers an array of materialsto help college faculty teach spatialthinking in the social and environmen-tal sciences, including both "classics"like V.0. Key's 1949 work on mappingof southern politics and emerging toolslike "virtual globes."

In the natural sciences, Nobel laure-ate Carl Wieman (2007) argues thata range of visual forms, includingfigures and simulations made possibleby new technologies, are essential toeffective scientific education. JoHandelsman, Sarah Miller, andChristine Pfund's Scientific Teaching(2006) explains how using a visualframeworks and "mini-maps" can helpstudents not only learn content in abiology course but also better under-stand how scientists think and how thescientific process works.

In history, Michael Coventry andcolleagues from the Visible KnowledgeProject (crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp) recently presented, in the JournalofAmerican History (2006), five casestudies of faculty using new visual ap-proaches to teach historical contentand thinking skills. In education andpsychology, Elizabeth Thomas, NancyPlace, and Cinnamon Hillyard publisheda pair of articles in the journal CollegeTeaching (2008) that outline and assessseveral approaches to using "visual im-ages in the college classroom to promotestudents' capacities and skills."

Faculty in composition and culturalstudies have produced the deepest litera-ture on the pedagogy of visual literacy inhigher education. Lynn Z. Bloom, DonaldA. Daiker, and Edward M. White's 2003Composition Studies in the New Mil-lenium includes several chapters, bothprovocative and practical, on visual lit-eracy and the teaching of college writing.Brian Golfarb's Visual Pedagogies (2002)blends critical theory and concrete ex-amples to show the potential of studentsas producers of visual and multimodalacademic work. In The Rhetoric of Cool:Composition Studies and New Media(2006), Jeff Rice argues for a new un-derstanding of writing as inherently net-

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PUBLICATIONS* Association of American Collegesand Universities. (2002). Greater Ex-pectations: A New Vision for Learn-ing as a Nation Goes to College.Washington, DC: AAC&U.[ Association of American Collegesand Universities. (2005). LiberalEducation Outcomes: A PreliminaryReport on Student Achievement inCollege. Washington, DC: AAC&U.0 Coventry, M., Felten, P., Jaffee,D., O'Leary, C., Weis, T., & Mc-Gowan, S. (2006). Ways of Seeing:Evidence and Learning in the HistoryClassroom. Journal ofAAmerican His-tory, 92 (4), 1371-1402.M Drucker, J., & McVarish, E.(2008). Graphic Design History: ACritical Guide. Upper Saddle River,NJ: Prentice Hall.0 Elkins, J. (2007). Visual Literacy.New York: Routledge.• Gee, J. P. (2003). What VideoGames Have To Teaching Us aboutLiteracy and Learning. New York:Palgrave Macmillan.E Golfarb, B. (2002). Visual Cul-tures in and Beyond the Classroom.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.0 Handelsman, J., Miller, S., &Pfund, C. (2006). Scientific Teaching.New York: W. H. Freeman.0 Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in theNew Media Age. New York: Rout-ledge.N Luke, C. (2003). Pedagogy, Con-nectivity, Multimodality, and In-terdiscipilnarity. Reading ResearchQuarterly, 38 (3), 397-403.N Mayer, R. E. (2005). The Cam-bridge Handbook of MultimediaLearning. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.0 Metros, S. E., & Woolsey, K.(2006). Visual Literacy: An Institu-tional Imperative. ED UCA USE Re-view, 41 (3), 80-8 1.* Mitchell, W. 1. (1995). PictureTheory: Essays on Verbal and VisualRepresentation. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.0 New Media Consortium. (2005).A Global Imperative: The Report ofthe 21st Century Literacy Summit.Austin, TX: NMC.* New Media Consortium; Edu-cause Learning Initative. (2008). The2008 Horizon Report. Austin, TX:NMC.0 Oblinger, D. G., & Oblinger, J. L.(2005). Educating the Net Genera-tion. Boulder, CO: Educause.0 Purve,, D., & Lotto, R. B. (2003).Why We See What We Do: An Empiri-cal Theor' of Vision. Sunderland,"MA: Sinauer Associates.0 Rice, J. (2007). The Rhetoric ofCool: Composition Studies and NewMedia. Carbondale, IL: Southern Il-linois University Press.0 Stafford, B. M. (2007). Echo Ob-jects: The Cognitive Work of Images.Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.E Thomas, E., Place, N., and Hill-yard, C. (2008). Students and Teach-ers Learning to See - Part 1: UsingVisual Images in the College Class-room to Promote Students' Capaci-ties and Skills. College Teaching, 56(1), 23-27.0 Thomas, E., Place, N., and Hill-yard, C. (2008). Students and Teach-ers Learning to See - Part 2: UsingVisual Images in the College Class-room to Enhance the Social Contextfor Learning. College Teaching, 56(2), 74-77.N Tufte, E. R. (2006). Beautiful Evi-dence. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.E Tufte, E. R. (2001). The VisualDisplay of Quantitative Information.Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.* Wieman, C. (2007). Why Not TryA Scientific Approach to ScienceEducation? Change, 39 (5), 9-15.N Zull, J. E. (2002). TheArtofChanging the Brain: Enriching thePractice of Teaching by Exploringthe Biology of Learning. Sterling,VA: Stylus. "w

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WEB SITESE Active Learning with Power-Point, Center for Teaching andLearning, University of Minne-sota: wwwl .umn.edu/ohr/teachleam/tutorials/powerpoint* American Memory, Library ofCongress: memory.loc.gov0 ARTstor Digital Library: www.artstor.org0 EDUCAUSE: www.educause.edu"* Flickr: www.flickr.com"* International Visual LiteracyAssociation: www.ivla.org"" Lynda: www.lynda.com" New Media Consortium: www.nmc.org0 Spatial Perspectives on Analy-sis for Curriculum Enhancement:www.csiss.org/spaceE Visible Earth, National Aero-nautics and Space Administration:visibleearth.nasa.gov0 Visible Knowledge Project:crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp0 YouTube: www.youtube.comrc,

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worked, erasing traditional dichotomiesof visual or textual, print or online.

Rice notes some irony in the recentdiscovery of the visual by compositionscholars and teachers. Humans alwayshave used images as one important tool formaking meaning. That composition stud-ies, and indeed most academic disciplines,are only now beginning to take visualrepresentation seriously reflects a failureof many academics to understand hu-man learning rather than a radical changesparked by technology and culture.

To train students to see criticallyand to create in multiple modes shouldbe an essential component of a liberaleducation. That will require not only re-envisioning our curricula and teachingpractices but also supporting faculty,librarians, and others in learning to bothvalue and use visual representations inworking with students. rc

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TITLE: Visual LiteracySOURCE: Change 40 no6 N/D 2008

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