Visual Literacy in Higher Education: Trends and Impacts

Introduction

The contemporary learning and experiential environment is highly visual. Students are exposed to websites, television, and a plethora of other sources of images and visual data. This increase in the pervasiveness of the visual in daily life has also changed what it means to be literate. As Ron Bleed states in Visual Literacy in Higher Education, "The literacy of the 21st century will increasingly rely not only on text and words but also on digital images and sounds" (Bleed, 2005).

This view of the importance of visual literacy in contemporary higher education is expressed across a wide range of articles, studies, and reports. Furthermore, this trend carries important consequences. It impacts not only teaching methods and the way material is presented in the classroom, but also exerts a profound influence on the development of learning skills in students and on the creation of effective curricula. These are points that will be stressed throughout this overview of the available literature.

The above perspective applies equally to nursing and healthcare education, where visual instruction can be highly effective for training purposes. This paper discusses the literature under the following general headings: the meaning of visual education and its importance; the way it affects higher education in terms of teaching styles and outcomes; and, finally, the way visual literacy shapes the development of school curricula.

The Meaning and Importance of Visual Education

Visual education is, in the first instance, technology-bound — it is highly dependent on technology for its effective application, which carries both positive and negative implications. Studies of media in education and visual literacy therefore intersect in various ways. A point reiterated in many studies is that "new technologies are changing what it means to be literate" (Bleed, 2005). As Bleed further argues, "In the 21st century, the ability to interpret and create visual, digital and audio media is a form of literacy as basic as reading and writing text" (Bleed, 2005). In other words, visual technology and literacy are viewed by many not as optional extras in higher education, but as necessities.

This view is echoed by Wilhelm (2005), who states that "the use of images is becoming more pervasive in modern culture, and schools must adapt their curricula and instructional practices accordingly" (p. 24). Related to this is Wilhelm's contention that visual literacy is growing in curricular importance "as society relies to a greater degree on images and visual communication strategies" (Wilhelm, 2005, p. 24). The question of visual education's role in curriculum development is connected to the recognition that, for students to be marketable in contemporary society, visual literacy skills are an essential prerequisite (Wilhelm, 2005, p. 24).

A further point made by Bleed and others, however, is that despite this consensus, most educational institutions still focus primarily on textual means of communication in their teaching processes and curricula.

There are many definitions of visual literacy in the literature. One of the most succinct is offered by Smolin and Lawless (2003), who define it as "the ability to understand and produce visual messages" (p. 570). Wileman (1993) defines visual literacy as "the ability to 'read,' interpret, and understand information presented in pictorial or graphic images" (p. 114). A closely related concept is visual thinking, described as "the ability to turn information of all types into pictures, graphics, or forms that help communicate the information" (Wileman, 1993, p. 114).

Commentators also emphasize that in the modern technological age, "students must learn to make meaning not only out of text but also out of the vast amount of visual information conveyed to them through images" (Smolin & Lawless, 2003, p. 570). Smolin and Lawless elaborate that a visually literate individual can "examine, extract meaning and interpret the visual actions, objects, and symbols that he/she encounters in the environment" and can "use these abilities to communicate with others" (Smolin & Lawless, 2003, p. 570). Visual literacy is thus described as a mode of understanding and expression that is becoming increasingly accepted and important within the educational environment.

A study by Pinon (1999), published in the Journal of Instructional Psychology, examines visual education from a practical standpoint. The study found that in the acquisition of geographic knowledge, "imagery provides an economical framework for simultaneously representing all aspects of perceptual/spatial information (e.g., an intact image of a map) and for integrating the relations between the visual and verbal information" (p. 226). Students who used visual elements such as icons and labels were able to recall more information than those relying on text alone.

Importantly, the study also found that visual imagery facilitated various types of learning. Pinon reports that imagery aided students' ability to recognize and point to state locations on a map, identify individual state contours, and — two weeks after instruction — match state contours with their names, serving as "a referent for shape retrieval" (Pinon, 1999, p. 226).

Numerous other examples in the literature support the value of visual imagery in learning. An article entitled "Ohio Teacher Brings Teaching, Learning to Life with the Addition of a Visual Presenter" (2004) illustrates the difference between text-based and visual modes of education, noting that sophisticated technology has joined the blackboard and chalk in the modern learning environment and is "bringing lessons to life for students from elementary to graduate levels."

Pinon (1999) also notes that visual and multimedia formats "capture children's interest and are more easily understood, allowing the learner to focus on higher-level processes such as identifying problem-solving steps" (p. 226). This suggests that visual education aids problem-solving — a point reinforced by Levison (1994), who argues that the use of visual imagery in older students facilitates the solving of highly abstract problems and supports the "image-formation that underlies great science" (p. 3).

There are also studies that directly address the impact of visual education on the nursing profession. In her article Nursing Education 2.0: YouTube, Diane J. Skiba explores the implications of online platforms for visual learning in nursing education, arguing that sites like YouTube cannot be ignored by nursing educators and that the Internet can be used to "transform nursing education" (Skiba, n.d.). Research on nursing information literacy similarly notes that "as information is created at an ever-increasing rate in a bewildering variety of formats, the competencies required in professions are transformed," and that "information pertaining to the nursing profession is said to double every 5 years" (Nursing Information Literacy Skills, n.d.). The use of visual literacy skills is therefore becoming increasingly important in nursing education and training.

These views are supported by research at Brigham Young University, which found that basic visual literacy instruction is needed in disciplines outside the arts. A study across university departments, including nursing, found that "statistical analysis of the data revealed visual literacy to be somewhat important across all the disciplines and identified an intermediate level of proficiency as needed by students in all five of the colleges" (Christopherson, n.d.).

In summary, these and other studies underscore the point made by Adams and Hamm (2000) that literacy "now requires understanding and manipulating the processes used to create messages in the modern world" (p. 22), and that students are expected to decode information from a variety of media. Equally important, however, is their caveat that this expanded definition of literacy does not "diminish the importance of traditional reading and writing skills; rather, it recognizes the increasing importance of information and communication technology" (Adams & Hamm, 2000, p. 22). As they observe, "Today's students live in a world where more and more information is communicated through a video screen. The habits of mind fostered through media interactions really do need to be understood by everybody" (Adams & Hamm, 2000, p. 22).

Conclusion

There is an ongoing debate in the education arena about the impact and importance of both visual literacy and technology at the high school level and beyond. On one hand, there are those who advocate for visual literacy and who are positive about the outcomes of including this form of literacy in disciplines such as nursing education. On the other hand, some are concerned that incorporating visual literacy will cause curricula to become overly "technologized," and that older, established modes of teaching and learning will be lost (Garton, 1997, p. 209).