Graphics for Learning

Here is a summary of guidelines for using graphics to teach the most common content types: procedures, concepts, facts, processes, and principles.

Procedure

Tasks that involve the same steps each time they are performed. E.g. accessing email, completing a routine customer order.

• Provide demonstrations that reflect the work environment
• Show activity flow from the performer's perspective in the job environment
• Manage cognitive overload when procedures are complex
• Use audio and visual cues, place text close to visuals, and eliminate extraneous detail
• Use visuals to draw attention to and illustrate warnings
• Support visuals with text to provide directions, feedback, and memory support

Concept

Supporting knowledge that involves a category of objects, events, or ideas usually designated by a single word. E.g. integrity.

• Display two ore more representational graphics contiguous to each other and to text definitions
• Create counterexamples
• E.g. examples of formatted and non-formatted web pages
• Use analogies especially for more abstract or unfamiliar concepts
• E.g. a mail analogy for the functions of the Internet OSI layers
• Display related concepts together
• Use organisational graphics to illustrate related concepts
• Promote learner engagement with concept visuals

Fact

Supporting knowledge that designates unique, specific content about objects, events, or people. E.g. specific log-on codes, order entry screen, product specifications.

• Us representational visuals to show concrete facts
• Display factual data where it can easily be seen
• Use organisational visuals to display multiple discrete facts
• Use mnemonic visuals when facts must be recalled
• E.g. Tenador = Spanish for fork: show 10 forks stuck in a door.
• Use relational visuals to support discovery of relationships or trends
• Engage learners with factual visuals by including them in practice

Process

Supporting knowledge that describes state changes about how a system works. E.g. the performance appraisal process.

• Use transformational visuals such as flow diagrams and animations that show state changes in the process
• Manage load by teaching system components first, providing words in audio format, and using attention-focusing strategies (such as arrows, colour, and/or a zoom effect)
• Use interpretative visuals such as schematics to represent abstract processes
• Promote engagement with process visuals to help learners build a cause-and-effect model of the system

Principle

A comprehensive law that includes predictive relationships; tasks that require workers to adapt to unique situations. E.g. making a sale, writing a report.

• Use representational visuals of the job environment
• Use design devices to manage cognitive load
• E.g. use a PC, telephone, and filing cabinet in a virtual office to store information and data for later review
• Assign analysis of video-taped cases to promote learning principles that involve high degrees of interpersonal activity
• Engage learners with explanatory visuals including visual simulations and static interpretative visuals to build rich mental models that underlie the principles

Ref: Graphics for Learning, by Ruth Clark & Chopeta Lyons