Report from #ecil2014 - Use of Infographics in Education

Next at the European Conference on Information Literacy, held in Dubrovnik was Pınar Nuhoglu Kibar talking about A New Approach to Equip Students with Visual Literacy Skills: Use of Infographics in Education. She started by defining infographic ("visualization of data or ideas that tries to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood") and visual literacy. The two questions addressed by the speaker in her PhD are (in abbreviated form) Could infographics be used in the learning process? and Could infographics be a way of ensuring qualified learning?
Participants were 64 students in the Computer Education and Instructional Design Department, taking an instructional design module. The tutors used an infographic to describe the instructional design process, as a roadmap for students. It presents the position of an instructional designer in the team, and presents at the kind of instructional design that should be recommended. The students then had each to create an infographic, which was subsequently assessed.
The educator developed a rubric to assess the infographic under the categories: visualisation, fonts, colours, layout, organisation, elements and title, though they want to work more on what to put in the rubric. She found that they needed to give the students more teaching about page design (the students were better at producing the text than they were at creating the visuals), that the students could have benefited by seeing the rubric, and to give more opportunities for peer feedback.
Infographic (nothing to do with the presentation!) by DimitraTzanos under Creative Commons license, https://www.flickr.com/photos/dimitratzanos/4604061808/