Alex interviews Dylan Craig, visual information architect with the Global Campus Media team. They discuss the resources and capabilities of the media team for online instructors with the U of A. And they dive into the concept of visual literacy from the perspective of graphic design and instructional design to improve the use of media and visuals in online courses.

References:

• Moline, S. (2008). What is visual literacy? Stenhouse Publishers. 
• Visual Literacy in Bloom's Taxonomy to Support Visual Learning Skills, Arneson & Offerdahl
• Mayer's 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning
• The Pedagogy Toolkit, Myth Takedown #1: The Illusion of Learning Styles

There's so much. There's so much of this stuff, you're probably you could have an entire podcast just on this kind of stuff. Of course, of course. Right. And it's it's not something you just know or should know or learn overnight. You know, it it does take a while, but.

In general, I think just like looking at these things or asking other people to to look at it for you is is helpful.

Welcome to the pedagogy toolkit. In today's episode, Alex will interview Dylan Craig.

Media staff member with University of Arkansas Global campus team.

Today, we're going to be talking about visual literacy and instruction, and how instructors can help develop this in their online programs. Stay tuned.

Welcome. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah. How are you doing this afternoon? I'm doing quite well. How are you? I'm not too bad. Glad to have you here today. You are a member of the media team that we have here at Global campus. Would you mind telling us just before we kick off talking about visual literacy, we're going to be discussing today? What is your role and what does a typical day.

For you on the media team at Global Campus, look.

Like right?

Though technically my role is listed as visual Information Architect, which is an interesting title, it's not. I'm not sure it's one I've I fully understand. Really I'm a mostly a graphic designer. However I we do do a lot of other things within the media team and and maybe for myself even more so is that I kind of.

Pick up a lot of.

Different little tasks amongst everyone, so graphic design stuff is mostly what I do. But also you know when we need illustration I may help with illustration.

OK, when we need extra 3D work I might help with 3D or computer animation or things like that, so I'm a little bit of everything in that sense, but my main thing really is is graphic design.

Very cool. So you don't leverage it and tell people you're an architect when you meet them at parties. That's part of why it stands the style I did not.

I did not come up with that, that title name and it's it is part of why it makes me a little bit.

Uncomfortable because it is like, no, I'm not archetype.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, I'm curious because you say mainly graphic design, but you mentioned some of the other kind of cool, yeah, experiences that you get to work on here with different projects. What was your educational background in that? Did you study graphic design and then you've picked up these other skill sets along the way or how did you kind?

Yeah.

So.

Of find your way into media.

So I came to it approaching it from a place being interested in games, specifically video games.

So for me, when I came to the University of Arkansas, I knew that's what I was interested in creating. So I actually double majored in both art and computer science simultaneously. And in art, I was too focusing on graphic design and taking kind of like computer science classes. At the same time.

And fell into the what was for a while the Tesseract program here at the University of Arkansas, which was a project with.

The Humanities Department making games about ancient Rome, mostly in mythology, it kind of started out of a sort of like visualization effort for Pompeii and make basically Doctor David Frederick, who is in the humanities.

Or here wanted to do.

More advanced kind of visual recreations of Pompeian homes and in looking at like, OK, what kind of stuff is possible with that? How do we visualize that? He's looking at game engines and so he's like man, I really wanna. I think, I think I think this is a motivation. So you know, but this is my understanding is he was essentially saying like oh, I really want to learn how to.

Use these game engines to be able to explore these homes and houses in, in real time. Right. I'll teach a class on creating games in these game engines and learn it that way and that kind of spun into a whole thing.

Where multiple people were working and learning about making games for years, and there it was, it was actually funded by Global campus for for.

A while. Yeah. Yeah. Ken, our instructional design manager references it. Yep. He was part of that project. I believe when it happened however many years ago now. But that's such a great intersection and it.

Yep.

To be really relevant is.

Yeah, it's really unique. Really unique, yeah.

That we'll talk about today.

Of.

Seeing interdisciplinary actions come together, historical study.

Yeah, yeah.

Computer design gamification so so many cool components.

Right, so so graphic design is kind of like formal training like and and learning that way. And of course I learned also on the job working on campus and there's various graphic design jobs both for the student newspaper here and for various departments. But, you know, the 3D stuff and the more game adjacent interactive type stuff I learned.

Through Tesseract, which is kind of by doing yeah class we had a class where we learned.

With.

Roman history and mythology, but also how to use these game engines and a lot of the learning. There was just kind of figuring it out as.

We went, which was interesting, which is some of the best learning that you can have sometimes just figuring it out as you go. Awesome. Awesome. So experience that in your undergrad then? Yeah, found your way here with the global campus team as the Renaissance man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

In a in a sense, in a way to.

Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

Doing a lot of different things here, so can you talk a little bit about the global media team like what that staff team looks like? What kind of roles do you have on staff and what kind of?

Right.

The resources that media.

Has right Global campus instructors and programs.

For.

Right. So I mean, I've kind of alluded to it right, we're talking about Ohh I help out with these different things. But yeah, we have a lot of different things that we do here.

Here we assist with graphic design and we make infographics and help out with PowerPoints and things like that, which is what I help out with a lot. But also we have multiple illustrators that are really, really talented at making custom illustrations for things and often that feeds into other projects.

They can also do animation by hand or in 3D. We do have someone on staff who's very good at 3D animation and working in in Blender.

And doing doing 3D work, which is useful for a lot of different applications. And then we have of course the video side. So you can kind of we kind of break it down into two halves of the media, we have the kind of video half and the animation half animation sort of including like like animation, 3D animation, 2D animation.

Illustration and design. We sort of think of it that way, but then the video half they're working in the studio, you know, as you know, right next to us.

We have a full studio here with a green screen and a lightboard and multiple cameras and lights and all sorts of stuff. The video half are people who are filming our instructors here and recording and going out on site sometimes, but then also editing that video and making making those videos.

Really, really. Come together and and work well. Work well together. And then that's where the like custom illustrations and animation comes in, because sometimes those videos have segments of animation or illustration and the two have sort of get.

Merged together. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a great explanation. I've been fortunate.

Be a part of several course designs where both sides of those those halves you mentioned have been utilized and getting to to see video recording made of lectures, but then see how animation comes in and really amps up the the quality of the course there and doesn't go without being said because we're we're doing this over audio only.

That we are in one of the media resources right now, right, we're in the it's the podcasting booth, which was really kind of rigged to be a podcast booth about a year and.

1/2 ago.

Right. And I would I.

Because it's.

Would say this is more than a booth. I mean there's a there.

Is a.

Separate recording booth.

Next to us, but we have a.

Table. Yeah, right next to the the voice over Booth. So if ever there's really needs to be really dialed in voiceover for.

Yeah, they were using it this morning. Yeah. When we have when we have a lot of videos, we'll have someone come in and record voiceover for our videos. And that all gets edited together as.

Things like that.

Well, yeah. So you know my next question is gonna be, how does this have a direct impact on online classes? And I think it's probably pretty clear by the things you've described for any of our instructors.

To.

Are part of teaching through global campus there any of the departments and programs that?

Have.

These types of resources are available to them through the development of of new and rebuilt online classes, and so those are things that for those listeners that we have who are interested in taking their courses really to the next level, always try and bring that up when I'm working with instructors. But our media team is fantastic and they can leverage all kinds of great resources and great staff to.

Really bring visualization and more quality content to the the course, and so maybe that can lead into what we're really wanting to talk about in some substance today. The idea of visual literacy in online instruction and.

This is where we were talking earlier. We're kind of coming at it from two different angles.

Because.

I mean in it from your world of graphic design, visual media design, I'm going to look at it more from the pedagogical learning instruction standpoint. So this might be where we can kind of just explore together.

Right.

Well, I strongly suspect they are very similar in what they're talking about, but they're using different words. So we may have to do some translation here.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So for you, if I were to say, Dylan, and as a professional in your field, how do you define or understand visual?

Literacy, right? Yeah.

That's.

That's a tough one. I mean, I think part of it is, you know, you're talking from a teaching perspective, so that literacy element is a lot more important, whereas I think we tend to be working with people who are visually literate already. So. So it's not so much that it's it's less of a a concept that we talk about, however.

It is something I think we understand.

In that you know the way you interact with and think about the nuances of how people interact with visual content, right is is pretty nuanced. Yeah, right. Like, there's a lot of.

Little things that your brain does when it sees visual content. The process especially I think of learning graphic design is is learning about those things because you're trying to.

Manipulate the brain with with the great work you do in the graphic design in that you know the message you're trying to communicate is being communicated visually and you have to know how these little subtleties of moving an image around. Change that impression be that making it more readable.

That, you know, just communicating a a more esoteric idea.

But I mean that applies for more than just graphic design like even, you know, like artists and illustrators do the same thing, although it it kind of becomes more and more esoteric and sort of weird as you as you get away from it and that like it's it gets really subtle with illustration. But you know, I mean when an illustrator cheat makes any decision and how they're choosing.

To.

Draw a character that they are usually making that decision because it does something different and it it communicates something different and it makes you feel something different.

And then when you get into, you know, abstract art, you know, now, now you're outside the realm of what can even be expressed with.

Sure, sure. Yeah, there's there's so many layers to it, and yours ends up moving more toward that artistry side, but it can obviously begin in a way that I was thinking. I mean, there's, there's there are definitely parallels in your element of it. And our element of it is going to revolve around the psychology of interpreting visuals because I I wasn't going to try necessarily define.

Way of understanding, I found a good one from found this from the author Maggie Murphy, she said. We understand visual literacy to be defined as an interconnected set of practices, habits and values for participating in visual culture, and that's probably the visual culture is the intersection of what you're doing that can be developed through critical, ethical, reflective and creative engagement with visual media.

And so really it's visual literacy from a pedagogical standpoint.

Is.

Understanding some of what you're doing and designing things for clarity. For communicating a message, but then understanding how is that being leveraged in a way that actually hits the goal of a learning objective that an instructor or a teacher is wanting to provide for the students, not just providing visuals for the sake of visuals or withholding.

Visuals when visuals might actually be beneficial.

Visuals for the sake of visuals, I think is such a such a great concept because yeah, that's that's kind of the entire thing. Is like, that's not what you do.

Right.

Right, don't just throw a random picture on your PowerPoint slide to fill up space.

Yeah, yeah, it's not decoration when you are adding visuals to a thing. Usually you are trying to communicate an idea right? And and that's that's really important.

Because this is something I was thinking about ahead of this episode, we were recording the whole concept of visual literacy and visualization in the first place.

Because we do have the benefit of society that visual.

Literacy is not just a functional.

Component of our society. It's a it's an artistic expression and that's we've been able to see that we think of visuals and art.

In this more nuanced way, but fundamentally, visuals are a component in the evolution of communication because communication is inherently first and foremost, auditory and verbal right. Human human communication starts out through body language, probably be a part of that too body language, and then verbal communication.

Is how we first experience the exchange of ideas, and then you start to see what are the first ways that human beings start to.

Display communication. It's through.

You know those stone paintings? Yeah. Stone stone depiction. Or depictions on stones in ancient Neolithic era. And then it evolves into type and text. But then we still need the visuals.

Paint. Painting ideas.

Yeah.

To help express ideas.

Right. But you can even go back further than that. I mean, as you say, like body language, but like so much of our communication is is reading facial expressions or things like that or even.

Like baked deep deep in our psychology is our willingness to or our deep desire to avoid things that look dangerous to us. Right. You know, like, if we see something spiky that irritates us and makes us uncomfortable. If we see something that's round and pleasant, you know. Oh, OK, that's that's not a threat. And I think a lot of the stuff that.

You know, designers are doing is, is is very much based on that really baseline psychology where it's.

So many of these rules of design are just meant to avoid arrangements of shapes that make our brains feel like a little bit uncomfortable. It's like, oh, that's that's that's spiky. That might hurt me. I don't. I don't wanna.

Look at that. No, thank you. Absolutely. And so I think that's a that's a good segue in understanding why this matters so much for the space of like online learning.

Development is again, we don't want to design visualization for the sake of just putting in a picture or putting something in its filler. So there are there are elements of good design and bad design that really can make or break a course. And so that's something you're thinking about always, I'm sure. Whenever you're developing a visual or graphic.

Or some animation for a course you have, like an example of what would be like a really good expression of this concept of this course needed to visualized and we were able to make it.

Very concrete. Well, I think it. I mean, it can go all sorts of directions. I mean, there's there's all sorts of stuff that we've created that I think is really good.

The team at one point we kind of go to this example a lot. We had a an equine class. I think you may have seen this. There was an equine class where the professor here needed examples of horses emoting. They needed horse emotions because that's really important. If you're working with horses and you know this is.

This is professors work with horses their entire life. They can read horse faces like human faces and.

And she is trying to communicate that to her students who do not have that ability, right or or maybe to a lesser degree, I'm sure.

Plenty of people have worked with horses.

And and in an online class too, yeah.

In an online class, but just in general, like for her normal lectures, this is a difficult thing. Is minor saying this is a difficult thing for her.

Yeah.

Right. And then add that layer, right?

And because when you look up videos on horses, you get like parts of it. And she could kind of pick apart and say like, OK, well, this is sort of the example of what I want, but it's not quite right or it's a grainy video of a horse being about to kick someone.

You know, you can imagine that as a very important.

To horse in motion to read is is this horse about to?

Is he? Is he or she angry?

Take you.

This horse is this horse, very irritated to have me right now because they don't express that the same way humans do. So she worked with an animator in our department and they created a series of hand animated short looping GIFs.

Yeah.

That expressed exactly the animations and the the horse expressions, the facial expressions, the body language of the horses. They did a whole bunch of.

That expressed really cleanly exactly what you wanted to express for these for these horse emotions, and it was at the end we had these, you know, very short looping animations that were really clean. They can be put on a web page for an online course, but she can also use them in her PowerPoint lectures.

In her face to face classes, and she was really, really happy with that. And we felt like that was a case where, you know, OK, how else would you do this? You know, you could go and try and film horses and irritate them. That wouldn't really work. And it may not be quite as clear what's going on.

Yeah.

You know, you could if you drew just drew illustrations or something that you wouldn't have the kind of lead up and the emotion that you're trying to communicate because a lot of these things are are emotions, they are. They're the same moments in time that happen for a split second.

Right.

So I think that was something that was that was really successful and.

I didn't have anything to do with that project. You know that that's an easy one. Something I did have to do with is just working on a history course and we had we were, you know.

Low on time, but we needed to.

Add an element to make make this discussion work better and there was a for what I was doing on that project and this is not particularly glamorous, but it was just going through archives of public domain photos and finding.

What I thought were really good illustrations of the historical concepts that were being talked about and the stuff that I really liked was the stuff that was contemporaneous cause it. I think it's very often in history courses is easy to find images that are.

Illustrations of things, perhaps, and maybe aren't the best, but in a lot of cases, sometimes you can find stuff that's contemporaneous documents we were getting up into those like civil war and beyond, and there was a lot of stuff where it was like, oh, now we have photographs, you know, you can find really good contemporary photographs and kind of pull stuff out for the imagery. So that's not even an example where media is creating some.

Thing, sure. But you know, we're kind of curating these things and and finding something that is is.

Really illustrative of what we're talking about.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Because even as you're sharing those examples and again, yeah, you all heard that, right horse emotions. It's. So it's it can be that granular like saying can be that specific of how do we display concepts and ideas.

Yeah.

Specific is better in some cases, right, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah. Or generally, you're not necessarily creating, but you're curating the need.

For having these contemporaneous images.

Because.

In this course, because it will enhance the effective learning. And so as you're talking about the needs or the goals that you're accomplishing in the media team, I'm hearing that and I'm thinking, OK, from an instructional design standpoint, you are really fulfilling a huge need in learning because as an instructional designer, I'm looking at one of the common areas of multimedia learning that we.

Learn about is.

There's research by a gentleman named Richard Mayer, who came up with 12 principles of multimedia design and learning. They kind of become industry standard and instructional design that these are good principles to to work off of. And one of the things is like the multimedia principle. And that's exactly what you're explaining with the history example having a mix of text.

And images to reinforce learning and something like the horse emotion gifts reinforce that as well because.

If we think about, we're only going to focus on 111 way to deliver the instruction piece, then you're going to miss out on so much. We've talked about learning styles in the past and how having one learning style is a myth, but yeah, definitely we need all of those components. And so just thinking of the idea of.

Small.

The alternative that I think of as an instructional designer to the images of the horse emotions is imagine just trying to write out a paragraph describing what the horse is doing and how that is so going to not capture.

Yeah, absolutely.

The reality of.

What is being seen and and needs to be?

I I I was thinking about this. Yeah. I think this is kind of where we see our role as the media team is when.

If a a problem or a concept can be solved or effectively communicated by writing it out or speaking it and and just clearly clearly I tell you this thing and now you understand. If that's the case, then the instructor has probably already done that and isn't having a problem with it. But I think where we see.

Our role is sort of like, well, what happens when that doesn't work super well? Where is there a place is like this concept is kind of hairy and I can never quite get it across. And it's always sort of a prop.

Problem and we try and identify those like the single points or multiple points in a course or in a broader concept.

And usually I think that there is a media approach that like allows that to be cracked open a little bit easier, right you know, whereas whereas maybe just writing it out, as you say wouldn't work.

As well, yeah, I mean that's.

It comes down to from the ID standpoint, understanding it probably happens with various levels of taxonomies like blooms. Taxonomy is the the idea of different hierarchies of learning and actions, and they're always expressed in these layers of verbs to identify.

Concept versus to analyze information or create something entirely new. Those are all things that revolve around learning, but they're going to require different resources in order to accomplish that, but that's where kind of getting into the.

Prints of it. Identify is usually one of the lower taxonomies on the scale.

But in some courses they need to identify is going to require visualization versus identifying concepts in maybe a philosophy class or history class is going to look very different than identifying species of plants in an earth science class, you know, and that's where visualization. We have to understand. The designers have to know while working with the instructors.

Do we have the resources in place in this course already that actually leverage?

Students reaching that goal, or do we need to find media or bring in your team as a professional resource in order to help meet that? And so there's.

All these different principles.

That, you know, I mentioned earlier the multimedia one, there's all different things that may enhance that learning and so we're helping hopefully bridge that gap for those instructors and serving.

So that their students understand concepts a little bit.

And.

More clearly, you need to know necessarily like ohh.

OK, you know my my students are having trouble with this one concept. What I need is an infographic like you don't have to know you. You may not know that you know, and I wouldn't expect people to. But but knowing that like, oh, OK, just explaining this.

It works, but it's tough, like it doesn't work as well as I would like it to. You know that is maybe the, maybe the realm where it's like now. It's like, OK, I want to talk to someone who you know, works more in the visual realm and like or.

Yeah, it's not ideal.

You know, has has maybe different skills and it's like how how do we get, how do we get this across?

How do we how do we conceptualize this? Absolutely, and that that's where working, you know, you're an instructor at EU of A and you have the the benefit of being connected to global campus. You know, you have instructional designers who will say will be that pivot point, hopefully to help connect those dots for you and and get you the media.

If you just kind of feel off like ohh this thing, it's like it's.

OK, but it's not great.

And then hopefully, if you're an instructor listening at another institution, you have those resources or you know how to go about achieving those resources or getting a hold of them in order to advance that I. And because I can think of another example I had an instructor in a marketing course a couple semesters ago who?

During the pandemic shutdown.

Was the course was retail strategy. And so she had used her iPad and basically screen recorded a scorecard breakdown. This was something that they used a retail scorecard for their particular discipline that they're they're learning. And she said it's not.

Bad necessarily, but it's just not good, right? She said. I I'm using my iPad. I'm using the draw tool and I can't. I can't get super granular and my audio is.

Recorded at home. Yeah. And so even those kinds of things, putting a putting a fresh coat on there, we were able to bring her in. She recorded in our studio. We put up her graphics. We had her as basically like a side by side where her graphics are behind her. And as she's ideating in real time, we're able to to demonstrate what's happening behind her in a bigger visualization. You know, those kinds of things.

Hit on.

And.

Other principles that I'm thinking of, like with with the mayor, principles like that's the image principle right there, like using talking head videos to develop trust. Like she she's still like she would be in the face face. The students are seeing her, but the concept is being focused on well. And then we're also doing things like not putting in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Additional text you know, avoiding redundancy. These are the kinds of things that you probably have ingrained into you very automatically being that designer themselves and these are things that we want to make sure as the.

Yeah.

Instructional designers were.

Avoiding as well or or or keeping in mind when things are getting a little bit.

Yeah, these kind of these kind of concepts get more into the likes of the video side of things, which is is not my level of expertise, but yeah, absolutely. I mean just going through and like improving the audio quality on a thing like that. And even if she says all the same stuff with the same audio quality and then you edit it a little bit, you know you trim it you she said the same stuff, you just trim it down like now you're doing things that.

Like can make such a huge difference in terms of, you know, someone, someone. My ability to pay attention to it. You know, it's like. Ohh, OK, now this, this just flows so much better. Even though even if it's 90% the.

Name. Yeah. And that's where that's a good tool or tip for those instructors. Maybe don't have all the resourcing available to them, but they're having to develop that, say their own resources and media.

You know, practice a lecture before you give it on recording. Record smaller chunk lectures. Make those things a little bit more approachable, and then do just the most basic level of editing and that will go a long way in the communication of your concepts. So the students that can focus a lot more, you're allowing greater focus.

And so can you think of what are examples of like design gone bad? Like, what do you think of things where not necessarily that has been made here? Because I'm not saying that that is the case, but what are what are common tropes or things that happen in visual media that shouldn't be happening but are common?

Ohh.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

I do a lot of PowerPoint stuff. I see a lot of PowerPoints by a lot of different people and the number one thing I see that causes issues is too much content on a PowerPoint slide. That's really all it is. That's the number one thing I see.

OK.

A lot of.

And your content is complex and you know there's a lot of it, so it you've already simplified it down in, in what you've crammed on this PowerPoint slide, I'm here to tell you you probably still have too much on that PowerPoint slide. And you know this is.

OK.

This part of this is just the nature of PowerPoint and how it works. It's so radically different from writing text. It's it is primarily a visual medium. It is primarily something that is meant to supplement your lectures. So your lecture you, you know, you lecturing are presenting the.

The the words of the.

Thing and the PowerPoint is really just there to illustrate what it is you're talking about to provide other as we were saying earlier, other additional media sources like oh, here's a here's an image of what I'm talking about here is I've I've presented you with a new vocabulary term, a new word, maybe in another language. Here's it written out and and spelled out for you.

Yeah.

You can do. You can do simple bullet points. You know if the whole list of something is important and seeing all that in aggregate is important, then a simple bullet point list might be appropriate. Yeah, but a lot of times people fall into the into the trap of like, oh, I have to summarize everything that I'm saying.

And what you wind up with is you wind up with PowerPoints that are hard to read. You kind of get into a zone where you're trying to both read the PowerPoint at the same time as you're listening to the lecture. And just in just in general lessening the amount of stuff on your PowerPoint helps tremendously now that.

Doesn't mean that.

You have to simplify things. You can actually have the same amount of content.

But what you need to do is you just have more slides that you go through a lot quicker, so you have less stuff on each individual slide, sure, but you have more slides overall and you kind of snap through them as as you're as you're talking and that and that that improves PowerPoint stuff radically and and that's a lot of what goes into some of the videos that we record here is the.

The PowerPoint slide stuff.

Absolutely. And that can that can help increase student engagement because they're not stuck on one slide for two or three.

Oh yeah, that's what we're trying to do here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Minutes.

Limiting. I mean, that's the modality principle. Like limit your use of text. I think in actual face to face presentations if I recall correctly.

I think a lot of the business world applies. This is the three by five rule like no more than three lines of text that are 5 words or like words across, not characters, words across. Other than that, if you go beyond that in any type of presentation, you're over inundating.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's harsh. But I mean it's it's not that far off. I think you could.

Do a little more in either direction, but sure, that's about what I would say, yeah.

Well, because then it again, it hits into that redundancy where like you're saying, if a student's trying to read what's on the screen while also simultaneously listening to what the instructor is saying, then it does.

Get.

Yeah.

Overwhelming pretty.

Basically, and with that too, you're saying PowerPoints you hit on again, this is where the ID side is totally driving with the graphic design side because coherence and we've talked about already only use images and graphics that actually relate to what is being talked about, unless you're just throwing out a silly meme just to be funny.

Yeah.

But connect to your students that way, every once in a.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would also say, I mean this kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier is you don't just want visual for visual sake. I mean, you do want these images and these graphics you're putting in there to relate to what it is you're talking about. So having stuff is like, this is illustrating, this is illustrating something. This is something something.

While that's great, but I see that.

Absolutely.

Some of the best PowerPoints I've ever seen by the structure here and and this is something where they took all their own photos. You know it wasn't stock photos, it wasn't illustrations made by us. It was a. It was a very technical engineering discipline and they went out there and took photos of the machines and of the processes that were happening and little bits and.

Yeah.

And hey, they had photos of everything that they needed you.

Know. Yeah. And that's great cause then there's no Creative Commons or copyright infringement that they're there. They took their, they developed their own media and so.

Yep, Yep, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's just there. It was just.

It's it's theirs.

With their phone, I think.

So that's a good that's a good strategy for you.

As an instructor as well is.

If you're, especially if your research relates directly to what you're teaching, you know very conceptually for your students. You know, I get if you're you're working in high research and you're teaching undergrad freshman, sometimes the research doing is.

Going to direct, it's tough to go take photos with your iPhone of ancient Greece. Yeah, no, that's difficult.

Clearly.

Yeah, but if you are in the space where you can and it, it would actually practically meet the objective you're wanting to meet. Yeah. Then go for it. Yeah. Like saying with your instructor in the.

The equine field, right? Taking a photo or a short video probably wasn't going to meet exactly what she was going for.

Yeah, that's a real specific problem that we were.

Able to solve? Yeah. And that's a great opportunity where again we're we're very.

But I'm sure there are a lot of cases in the other parts of our.

Class where she is able to do that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So a part of that too is knowing that that's where instructors he was just having that next step towards your understanding, good pedagogy, good science of teaching will help you discern the.

Right.

Sure.

You know what is the next best way to enhance this beyond just verbal communication or text to to explain my concept. And so because, yeah, you you really do need all of it. Classic example that I that I think of is if we were actually talking about IKEA the other day.

I can't remember how that got brought up, but.

You know, have you ever put together a piece of IKEA furniture? OK, I never have, like, not not having lived near one. Ohh yeah. I just never had it. So how did you find that experience?

Oh yeah.

It was. It was fine. I think I'm pretty good at that. Sort of like, you know, following visual, I was like a kid growing up.

So so visual instructions without any English text in a in a three in a 3D space that's been reduced down to 2D.

Right.

Is is was mostly fine. IKEA is is not quite up to Lego standards, but it was pretty good. Some weird you know you have some weird like screw type things and some stuff. It's like, you know, little tiny pieces of hardware that are hard to illustrate. Yeah.

Yeah.

Me to do here, absolutely.

And Lego Lego is a gold standard of quite literally instructional design. We are designing the instructions so you know exactly how to put this together. And again, it's built. It's meant for kids that adults do it and it's.

Sure. Well, that makes it more important that it's not confusing, right? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. But then the IKEA has got that other example because I've heard both sides of it. I've heard, you know, IKEA is the standard.

Difference. But imagine just trying to, even if it's an English, just trying to put together a desk when it's only written instruction. You can be done, but if there's if there's a piece that you don't recognize.

Yeah, yeah, it's tough.

Well, there's the classic writing. There's the classic.

Yeah.

Writing exercise of like write a write the instructions to make a peanut butter Jelly sandwich.

Right. You know where you give that task to? I don't know. I would assume like a fifth grader like and they try and write it out and there is basically no chance that when interpreted literally the the instructions that they wrote will be complete.

Right.

Because you could, you could continually splice it out further and further.

Right, right. The interpretations. And you know, now you kind of get into like a computer science sort of thing where hyper literal instructions are exactly what you need to get a computer to do. The thing that you want. And it gets it gets really hairy. And why? Why can't this thing just know what I mean you.

That's right.

Know. So yeah, that's that's where the the text and the visuals. When putting things together.

Is super helpful? Why we need both? Because both are how we learn, right? And you're you may. And again we hopefully dispelled the myth in the past when we have that show for those who want to go back and listen to it. But you're not just.

A visual learner. You're not just a reading learner. You need to be all the learners, all the ways, because each of those exemplify different aspects of what it means to understand something so.

Yeah. Yeah, I I think it's. I think that's an interesting point because like, I definitely think of.

Myself as a.

Visual person and you know when that theory was going around, you know, visual and oh, what kind of learner are you? You know, I certainly would have said I was a visual learner. I think. Right, right. So kind of on the side. One of the things we learned the most in media, we're always learning.

Sure, I did the same thing.

New things, and very often it's software because we.

Have.

A lot of new there's always new software is coming out and they do different things. And very often you have to, you know, learn them or learn something new about them. So that's a lot of the stuff that we're doing in media. And I I have found that I can't stand most tutorial videos for learning software. It drives me crazy. And that's like 90% of what's out there.

Yeah.

In that like written blogs and like written instructions for things have declined and there's become less and less and less of.

Them and I found like I really really.

Appreciate written out instructions with with images next to them because.

Right.

I have the ability then with the way my brain works, I have the ability then to skim through it and say like OK, this get it, get it. I got that. I got that. I got stop talking to me. Stop telling me this, and oh, here's the part I need. Here's where. Here's where I'm stuck. Here's what I don't get. I'm going to. I'm going to read this more closely and a video which is good for a lot of things. It's certainly good if you don't know anything a.

Video is really good. It's like, OK, take me through it.

Absolutely.

Lead me through everything but a lot of times that's not the case where it's like I know the basics of things. I've used the similar software before. I already know this software. I just need to learn one thing about it.

Videos can be excruciating, right? Because you know, they they can be completely the wrong solution, at least at least for how I tend to.

Learn. Yeah, well, that demonstrates to by creating some type of instruction that.

Employees multiple modalities.

Yeah, yeah.

There's some text. Here's some imaging. You're allowing students to self scaffold in a way scaffolding that concept of some are going to be at a certain point. Yeah, in the framework of learning some, maybe at a different point and they're able to.

Yeah, sure.

Ohh.

At least with that type of resource self select into, how do I move?

At my pace.

Versus if it's all just the same big block of paragraph that everyone has work through, or this one video that everybody has to.

Just sit and listen.

Yeah. Yeah. Students are going. Some students are gonna be bored. Some students are still going to struggle. Some small percentage students are going to hit right where they're at employing more.

Right.

Visualizations that increases literacy for students of all levels in different ways. Yeah, for sure, because everyone going to learn a little bit differently and take away a little bit more or less depending on.

What's being delivered?

And offered. That's the tension is you don't want to then feel like you have to provide all things all the time. Always you don't. But use a mix would be the the.

Tip that I would give to the instructors.

And really, that's where you you are. The subject matter expert and you know we as the.

The designers, the graphic designers and the instructional designers have to lean on you to say hey, where is it that you just feel your students aren't getting it? Or what is the data point where you really see they're underperforming in this particular content in the course? And if I had something that just.

Produced it and displayed it a little bit more concretely or a little bit more clearly this would help.

I want to say like sometimes we have instructors come to.

Us with just like.

Brilliant. Like wild stuff. It's like, oh, I want to do this, this and that. And it's like, just like something we've never seen before and really, really cool, you know, examples of like, oh, that would be a great way to do this. And other times instructor.

Don't have any idea. Don't have zero idea of how to solve this problem and that's completely OK, right? Like I mean that is is quite literally what we're here for.

I do want to before before we end today. I do want to ask what are your thoughts on the boon of AI image generation from?

Boom or bang? Yeah.

Where where is that? Where is that? I'm sure media has. If I were to get you all on a round table or quite, quite.

It's a very.

Oh Oh yeah.

The discussion I'm sure you've had it all the time.

Well, artists, as a rule, I think generally aren't fans of it. And that mostly comes from the way that their data sets are harvested, which is tends to be without permission and broadly it's past.

Sure.

That but.

Yeah. Yeah, leaving.

The backyard.

Leaving leaving that aside.

I think it kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier in that like, why are we creating visuals and why are we using them? And usually that is to communicate a very specific, nuanced idea and communicate it accurately.

And hey, I really isn't the tool for that it it is much more on that kind of like decoration and visuals for visual sake and of the spectrum. It's really, really good at making pretty images and appealing images.

But if you want something specific and and accurate out of it it it has no conception of that like you can, you can tell it something and it can maybe get close, but it.

It.

Truly has no actual brain in there. It's a statistical average of all the images that it's ever been trained on. So.

Now that said, there are actually a bunch of really interesting uses for AI in the visual media sphere as a whole, but it tends to be like really specific problem things where for example, in in Photoshop you know you have the ability.

Do resize things and and it kind of retools the image so that it stretches it out and kind of adds in data to resize that image in a more intelligent way. That is that is technically it's the same thing. So there's some interesting tools that are useful but maybe not to everyday people. I feel like the useful tools are maybe more.

Over the work that we do, where it's, oh, I can upscale this image now. You know, you do run into issues where if you upscale this image with an AI upscaler, it's no longer.

I don't know what you would call it like forensically acceptable, right? Like you have altered this image, it is not the original one you started with and the IT is adding in data that wasn't there.

Yeah.

Before right, which is.

Really kind of an interesting question, but for the most part you know if if it's not mission critical, there's things you can do where it's like, oh, I've I've cleaned this image up in.

A way that is nice.

Yeah. And so there, there are definitely applications for it. But in terms of Rd. generating.

An image whole cloth. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how you would use that in an academic context in a way that is like really usable.

It's more of just at this point it seems just more like a fun thing to just play with and see what it does, but I I totally agree it's you can't get granular with it like you would need to. Yeah. If you're really wanting to take an abstract concept and make it concrete, that's where an actual artist is going to be, I think permanently valuable. And so I it hits on the same principles.

Yeah. And it's hard to get.

Past that.

Yeah.

That AI in LMS management like Blackboard Canvas these types of learning management systems in teaching in general have still emphasis.

Hmm.

It's hopefully being able to leverage it as a tool and like an aid to resource, but keep the humans in control fully. Like, don't rely on it to make everything for you because it's either going to make mistakes or it's whether intentionally, unintentionally, always. But just because it doesn't understand what you're going for.

Yeah.

Right.

Right has no conception of anything, really. It's just, yeah. Guessing based on averages. Yeah, absolutely.

Anything really. Right, right. It's just it's just running off of averages and what's likely for sure. And I I talked about this with some of the other ID's and we've we've said you know I want AI to do the jobs that I don't want to do. I want AI to be able to clean my bathroom and you know, take care of.

Hmm.

Basic tasks around the house that you know I or send emails for me if we're talking large language models, things like that, that are very basic so that I'm free. So I'm free to just read and write and make art and do the the fun things that humans enjoy doing, not have it be reversed, you know, don't don't.

Yeah.

I think they can do that, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Generate my art for me, and then I still have to.

Go clean the toilet.

Any final thoughts that you have on closing remarks? Yeah, anything like that for what you want?

In general, I think just like looking looking at these things or asking other people to to look at it for you is is helpful. Talk to an artist, talk to a, talk to an artist today. Yeah. Support your local artists. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining Dylan. It's great having you. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

There you go.

Thanks for joining us today on the Pedagogy toolkit. Don't forget to subscribe. We'll catch you next time.