Visual Learning

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Humans are diverse, including in their learning styles. Visual learners tend to learn by seeing information illustrated, written out, mapped, and diagramed. Visual learning is inherent to most humans because it is one principal way that infants make sense of the world. It also is adaptable to other learning styles, such as aural and kinesthetic. Different teaching strategies address a variety of learning styles, so that all students are included in the learning experience. One problem is how to engage students in online study; research offers some useful strategies that incorporate visual learning strategies into the virtual classroom.

Overview

Different people learn in a variety of ways. Some learn better through visual stimuli, which helps them organize and visualize information. Most people who are visual learners also have a developed sense of space; that is, they are good at following directions and maps, as well as mapping information to process it better. That is why they are also known as visual-spatial learners.

In pedagogy—the science and methodology of education—visual learning is defined as the method of teaching that uses visual aids or organizers, such as charts, graphs, images, maps, slides, and videos, that help learners manage and understand information more effectively. The idea behind visual learning is that instructors use visual representations so that students can visualize the information, clarifying their thought processes and integrating new concepts more effectively. This is done through mental activities such as organizing, processing, and prioritizing information. Many theories and methodologies exist in relation to visual learning; generally speaking, most of them deal with ways in which learners engage in the mental activities related to learning through visual stimuli.

Visual learning methods are not limited to students who prefer a visual learning style. These methods also work well for students who learn through different styles—such as aural, verbal, or kinesthetic—because they can be combined with other styles. Most teachers are trained to implement a variety of styles, so that they may reach more efficiently a variety of students. An educator who teaches using visual learning strategies should be able to represent information graphically or visually through an array of instruments, which include mental maps, time lines, chronograms, flow charts, writing out information on a blackboard, and pictures. The idea is not only to facilitate a learner’s comprehension of the class material but also to promote the development of higher order conceptualization and thought among students. Higher order thinking relates to more complex levels of thinking than just basic comprehension, memorization, and repeating or restating facts. Higher order thinking skills require that students do something more with the information, such as categorizing it, making inferences, creating connections to other ideas or concepts, joining them in new or creative ways, and finding solutions and applying them.

Visual learning styles are among the most popular teaching styles, and they are used from elementary education to college, and in work training and corporate presentations, among many others. Experts claim that it is the most complete type of teaching method because it can be—and often is—integrated with other methods. Visual learning works well in the education arena for a variety of reasons. In general, people pay more attention to images and become less distracted during a presentation; while using visual aids, an instructor can explain the content and direction of the flow of information, making complex ideas clearer for learners. By becoming engaged with an image, learners also become more engaged with the topic. Visual aids help set the content permanently in the minds of students. In other words, using visuals helps make concepts “stick.” Experts explain that visuals enter the subconscious faster and more effectively than does spoken language. Moreover, for learners who comprehend better through verbal or aural methods, technology makes it easy to combine visual aids with verbal as well as aural inputs, such as music or sound effects.

Advocates of visual learning styles argue that humans are inherently geared to learning through the senses. In fact, infants learn through their five senses, and hearing and sight are—arguably—the most important. Nevertheless, infants face important challenges in the beginning of their lives because their eyesight is poor and uncoordinated; that is, very young infants cannot control their eye movements. Lack of language comprehension forces infants to rely on their innate abilities to categorize the visual input perceived in basic ways to begin to make sense of the world. The combination of other senses, such as touch, provide elementary forms of “feedback” for children to develop a fuller understanding of the objects and spatial layouts around them. Despite these early challenges, however, experts believe that visual stimuli help children first learn their environment in the most effective way possible (Needham, Goldstone & Wiesen, 2014).

Much of the literature on visual learning relates to implements that instructors may utilize to help students process and integrate information most efficiently. Some experts, however, highlight the importance of visual cues—or visual gestures—as an important communication characteristic among humans. It is also an important element of co-construction, a pedagogical factor that includes the interpretation of gestures and verbal information. Co-construction of knowledge refers to when an instructor is a facilitator of knowledge for an active student, rather than somebody who just imparts the knowledge to a passive student, as in a traditional educational setting. In co-construction, an instructor works collaboratively with learners to research, analyze, and interpret such knowledge. In a co-constructive approach, a holistic and dialogic communication, based on dialogue and the acknowledgement of emotion, is essential (Cope, Bezemer, Kneebone & Lingard, 2015).

In this scenario, visual cues and their interpretation are a common feature of educator-learner interactions, as learning is co-construed between them in dialogue. In other words, an instructor steers a learner to what he or she is seeing, but also respects the students’ initiative, so that both may piece the information together. In a co-constructive approach, visual cues are an important nonverbal support of verbal teaching, which occurs through dialogue and discussion. In some scenarios, however, instructors often guide students mainly nonverbally—that is, silently—but through important eye-to-eye and gesture interaction, to impart important information and ensure a student’s attention to the process. Such educational scenarios involve interactions in which both the instructor and learner are thinking together.

This not only enables learning and reflection but also enhances communicative skills through improving visual cue interpretation in learners. This is an important skill in many disciplines, such as those in which judgments are often based on visual information—the medical and psychosocial fields, among others. In multicultural settings, it is important to remember that different groups express themselves differently through visual action. A skilled instructor must be attentive so that he or she may notice subtle cues among learners, and may address any related issues in time. In that manner, the loss of important information processing can be avoided (Cope, Bezemer, Kneebone & Lingard, 2015).

Further Insights

Students who learn better by way of a visual-spatial approach tend to learn intuitively, incorporating chunks of information at a time, rather than through a slower process of gradual accumulation of isolated facts, small steps, and structured habit gained through repeated practice. For instance, these students may be able to learn multiplication through games including visual stimuli, rather than through memorizing each step independently. It is important, then, that instructors ensure that the information is presented in a well-organized way, incorporating a visual and spatial perspective as its organizational focus. One of the ways in which an educator may identify a visual-spatial student is by noticing that the student tends to doodle as they learn. Some experts add that visual learners tend to be particular about their clothing. Experts offer the following as useful information and recommendations for an educational or training session with visual-spatial students:

Organization:

• Incorporate an orderly visual and spatial perspective.
• Visual-spatial learners possess an intuitive sense of balance. Alignment of images must be balanced and accurate.
• Visual-spatial students are skillful at rotating images in their mind’s eye and make efforts to organize information through construction, categorization, labeling, and ordering. Information presented to such students should be easy to manage and organize.

Observation and Experimentation:

• Visual-spatial students are often skilled at visualizing “the large picture,” even if it is a simple or complex system. They are comfortable processing general perspectives and synthesized information, although they may forget details or exact sequences.
• Visual contact is important for visual-spatial students; that is, eye contact while communicating is important.
• Presenting visual implements and cues is crucial when teaching such students because they may become easily distracted by other stimuli in their environment, such as noise or open windows.
• They prefer to read and work in natural or soft light, comfortable conditions, and feel discomfort faced with blinking lights and extremes in temperature—too cold or too warm.

Teaching Strategies:

• Focus on learning objectives for each class session.
• Work collaboratively so that information may be effectively understood and applied.
• Ask advanced students to help organize class material. Depending upon level of advancement, they may also help select the material.
• Provide opportunities to work with and manage new material.
• Use visual aids and markers to illustrate sequenced steps. Simultaneous verbal information may be provided.
• Create visual-spatial opportunities in all aspects of the classroom. For instance, imagery should not be limited to creative fields such as the arts. The use of images, colors, maps, and charts can be an effective way to illustrate scientific, mathematical, mechanical, and verbal information.
• Provide lessons that leave space for open questions and research. Learning based on interactive material, such as case studies, provides students with incentives to take a more active approach to class material.
• Provide learners with opportunities to demonstrate how the knowledge has been integrated with previous knowledge, how solutions were found and applied, and with an evaluation of the material and feedback.

Homework:

• Visual-spatial students should be provided with ways to visualize the information in an open or panoramic view, especially when it contains numerous parts or details.
• Students should practice visualizing information as images to facilitate its setting into memory. Some students map the information, including its details and concepts.
• Once a concept has been understood, students should practice applying it to a variety of novel situations and laying out the information progressively rather than routinely, which may prove vulnerable to distraction.
• Attractive outlines and mind maps should be used to organize verbal tasks, such as written essays. This helps to visualize concepts, their cause and effect, and outcomes.
• Students should be encouraged to be as creative as possible with their illustration, models and maps.
• Students should be trained and encouraged to search for diverse sources of information when studying or doing homework.
• Students should be given homework tasks that include films, maps, multimedia material, computer-based and digital material, and other forms of visual information.
• Whenever students need to process and integrate new information, include tasks that require activities such as multimedia presentations, graphing, and tridimensional modeling.

Presentation of Learning Content in the Classroom:

• Avoid and prevent opportunities for visual distraction.
• Create lesson plans that break the class session into different related activities, such as peer review, writing down and sharing questions, group work, and brainstorming.
• Illustrate information with images and graphs. Creative multimedia material is strongly encouraged.
• Present a synthesis of content at the end of the session that includes visual aids.
• Use highlighters to underline important information.
• Provide illustrated feedback.
• Ask for feedback.

Exams and Tests:

• Before an exam, have students do group work aimed at finding alternative and positive ways of dealing with standardized tests.
• Provide test directions sequentially, such as with an easy-to-follow checklist.
• Break up the exam into different tasks. Exams can also include fill-the-dots answers, short essays, fill in blank, or an oral presentation.
• Think of new ways in which students may find the information. For instance, instead of having a student write in an answer, have them find the answer within a text.

Issues

Contemporary classrooms in most of the developed world have been modernized by the integration of computer-based and digital learning technology as a new virtual space for learning. In the beginning, a great deal of computer-based learning was asynchronous, that is, it relied on students to self-direct their learning experience, with no online interaction. As computer and internet technology advanced, however, more and more online classrooms were created in which students worldwide may participate in synchronous—or live—learning experiences.

Although most of the impact of learning technology on the learning experience is positive, teaching experts have argued that problems arise in re-creating the social interactions that take place within a physical classroom in the virtual space of the online classroom. Moreover, high hopes exist that computer-based technology will prove an incentive for students to develop and enhance self-directed learning skills; it is not reasonable, however, to believe that most students will automatically become skilled self-directed learners by the mere presence of computer technology. In other words, interaction with instructors and classmates is often considered necessary for an effective learning experience (Lai, Liu, Liu & Huang, 2016).

Much of online education occurs synchronously. One of the most effective ways to facilitate an effective learning experience for students in a synchronous virtual classroom is by procuring an experience as similar as possible to the environment of a physical classroom. This can be accomplished by asking questions, engaging in a chat-room exchange, and other forms of engaging students as part of online learning. Experts posit that asking questions is one of the most practical ways to initiate class discussion and to motivate students to engage in participative behavior that replicates the physical classroom.

Nevertheless, other experts have argued against asking direct questions in the online classroom, stressing that students with high anxiety or insecure personality traits may select online learning environments precisely to avoid being engaged in such interactions. They may suffer undue tension if they feel they have been chastised for providing an incorrect answer. Moreover, in some cultures, students are particularly uncomfortable with becoming the center of attention.

Experts, then, propose that rather than highlighting incorrect responses to in-class questions, instructors reward useful feedback as a strategy to motivate students to participate again. Because tangible prizes are problematic, rewards may be something like a joyful image in response to a correct answer. Studies have shown that students who receive a positive and humorous image as a response to their answers within seconds of participating show an enhanced level of attention to the learning activity. Studies also have shown that providing multimedia learning material, such as videos, increases and maintains student attention and makes the learning process more effective. These findings show a markedly positive effect in using, in a synchronous online classroom, a combination of in-class questions in which responses are accompanied by positive visual rewards and when class material is visually engaging (Lai, Liu, Liu & Huang, 2016).

Most studies show that interactions between instructors and learners in synchronous learning environments are the strongest predictors of student satisfaction. Instructors still play a crucial role in engaging students’ attention and enhancing their self-directed learning skills. It is recommended, then, that besides providing engaging multimedia learning content, instructors in online classrooms should not only provide chat-room spaces but also initiate questions intended to provoke dialogue, discussion, and other forms of fulfilling interaction.

Terms & Concepts

Aural Learning Style: Learning style based on listening.

Higher Order Thinking: Thinking processes that require engaging in connections between concepts, finding solutions, and other forms of complex cognitive action.

Kinesthetic Learning Style: Learning style based on touch and other physical activities.

Mapping: Laying out visually the connections between concepts, facts, or places. In relation to mental processes, the creation of symbolic or representational “maps” that illustrate graphically a process.

Mind’s Eye: The ability to represent something visually or as an image within the mind.

Pedagogy: The academic field of all things related to teaching.

Bibliography

Bacon, D. & Hartley, S. (2015). Exploring antecedents of performance differences on visual and verbal test items: Learning styles versus aptitude. Marketing Education Review, 25(3), 205–214. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=108761717&site=ehost-live

Cope, A. C., Bezemer, J., Kneebone, R., & Lingard, L. (2015). “You see?” Teaching and learning how to interpret visual cues during surgery. Medical Education, 49(11), 1103–1116. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=110483171&site=ehost-live

Heron-Hruby, A., Trent, B., & Stiles, L. (2016). Creating a dynamic classroom library: A visual-media, learning commons approach. Kentucky English Bulletin, 65(2), 26–33. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=116658585&site=ehost-live

Hsin I. Yung, & Paas, F. P. (2015). Effects of computer-based visual representation on mathematics learning and cognitive load. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 18(4), 70–77. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=110247504&site=ehost-live

Lai, C.-H., Liu, M.-C, Liu, C.-J., & Huang, Y.-M. (2016). Using positive visual stimuli to lighten the online learning experience through in class questioning. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 17(1), 23–47. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=113234944&site=ehost-live

Needham, A., Goldstone, R. L., & Wiesen, S. E. (2014). Learning visual units after brief experience in 10-month-old infants. Cognitive Science, 38(7), 1507–1519. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=103537077&site=ehost-live

Tomljenovic, Z. (2015). An interactive approach to learning and teaching in visual arts education. CEPS Journal, 5(3), 73–93. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=110364541&site=ehost-live

Wilson, K., Copeland-Solas, E., & Guthrie-Dixon, N. (2016). A preliminary study on the use of mind mapping as a visual-learning strategy in general education science classes for Arabic speakers in the United Arab Emirates. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 16(1), 31–52. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=114122071&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Berg, J. (2015). Visual leap: A step-by-step guide to visual learning for teachers and students. London, UK: Routledge.

Carroll, F., & Kop, R. (2016). Colouring the Gaps in Learning Design: Aesthetics and the Visual in Learning. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 14(1), 92-103. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=112171412&site=ehost-live

Chia-Hung, L., Ming-Chi, L., Chia-Ju, L., & Yueh-Min, H. (2016). Using positive visual stimuli to lighten the online learning experience through in class questioning. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 17(1), 23–47. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=113234944&site=ehost-live

Hattie, J., & Yates, G. C. R. (2013). Visible learning and the science of how we learn. London, UK: Routledge.

Majumdar, R. R., & Iyer, S. S. (2016). iSAT: A visual learning analytics tool for instructors. Research & Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 11(1), 1–22. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=117806869&site=ehost-live