Abstract
Visual imagery can play a valuable role in the teaching and learning process, but undergraduate and graduate students often do not have the skills needed to analyze images. For faculty to effectively integrate images in their curriculum students need to be able to apply critical thinking to images in the same way they apply critical thinking to text. They need to be able to work with primary source documents, and they need a vocabulary to talk about what they see. Typically, faculty do not have time within course curriculum to help their students develop these skills. The Visual Literacy project proposes to develop online modules that can be used by students to help develop a set of skills to be applied to the analysis of images. These modules will be designed so that students can work with them independently outside of class, allowing faculty to address this issue without taking up valuable class time.   A graduate student will be hired to work in an iterative development process with a faculty team to create the modules. Module prototypes will be used in three classes Fall 2005 and assessment will be conducted to determine their effectiveness. Revisions will be made and the modules will be made available for use by a wider audience during Spring 2006. The final versions will be released at the end of the Spring 2006 academic semester. These modules will help transform courses by providing faculty with a tool that will help them to more effectively make use of imagery in the teaching and learning process.

Faculty Call for participation

PDF of Grant Submitted to CTE

PDF list of individuals expressing interest in the project

Website: http://www.arhu.umd.edu/vislit/

Web Accessibility