As some may know last Friday I gave a small presentation on visual learning and visual thinking to a small seminar on the Future of Learning in
sLab on Friday. I came in to talk about my research and work in visual learning and visual thinking. I used it as a sort of testing ground for some of the elements that would appear in the final seminar for my thesis.
I had a lot of interesting feedback from the seminar. Along with a very quick and very brief visual history of written communication I created a few exercises to help get the group involved.
The first exercise the group was asked to "Draw the thing I [described] to [them]." I explained to them that I was going to describe them something like I had never seen it before and wouldn't have the vocabulary to describe. The intention of this exercise was to get them to realize that using words can't always help people understand what you are talking about. Anytime there is a drastically new discovery it is often difficult to describe to someone because the vocabulary does not yet exist.
I gave them 6 "clues" but I did not project them on the screen. In classrooms students are often left to their own devices. Professors will not always provide notes or slides and may not even provide visuals. This obviously can depend on the instructor but I was laying it out a little bit like a worst case scenario. I had slides but the slide itself did not necessarily give the most important information of the exercise.
The "clues":
1) It is long and thin
2) Cell-like structures make up its outer encasing
3) Four structures hold it up
4) It has fin-like pieces at its front end
5) There are triangular shapes in its front cavity
6) There are two windows on its front
The answer:
This exercise garnered a lot of constructive criticism. The major problems that people were having with this was the wording on the slide and the lack of some elements in the instructions. Not having said specifically that it was an object that they would be familiar with left some of the participants feeling lost. Most people caught on to that based on my previous statements and proceeded to attempt to guess the thing I was describing.
The other major point they brought up was that they thought the word object was limiting. Some thought that meant it could not be a living thing. I tried to veer away from the word object for that very reason but apparently thing is not far enough away from object. I will have to find another word that will encompass both objects and living things as I do not want to immediately give away what it is based on the language. It was suggested to me that I eliminate the word altogether and instead say "Draw what I describe to you" but I'm not sure yet if that is too ambiguous.
The second exercise I ran was as follows:
I told them that I was looking for visual answers and that there were no wrong answers. After the few minutes I had everyone show their answers and talk to them about how you didn't have to be an amazing artist to use visual thinking. It required only the use of very basic shapes and that using these very basic shapes you could make a multitude of objects without great artistic skill. This exercise also came under scrutiny.
The main issue with this exercise was the mathematic phraseology. Instead of interpreting the equation liberally many took it to mean that you could only combine the two and that other operations were off limits. Therefore they were less likely to subtract one shape out of the other. Some were reluctant to use the square or the circle more than once because they were strictly adhering to the mathematical phrasing. Strangely enough even after saying that the answers would be visual and not numbers or words I still got a few answers in the form of numbers. One person counted the number of corners and came up with 4. Another person counted the number of lines or segments and cam up with 5. This mathematical phrasing became an issue and blocked many of the possible solutions that might have been the outcome.
It was suggested to me that instead of simply using square + circle that I might also put up square - circle, and put of the image of the square and the circle and write underneath it the word combine. I don't know if using the word combine might again be misinterpreted as addition. The other issue I have with using words is that I was trying to demonstrate to them that they could create and infinite amount of objects using simple visual language. Even symbols such as +, -, and = make up a simple visual language. Using words to help them understand the language.
Some of the participants actually allowed me to take home their solutions so I will be posting their results (anonymously) in a later post. This will allow you to see some of the actual solutions that came about from the presentation.
I would actually be quite interested to see how the results would change when it was presented to children. Would the results be any different, would they have the same problems with wording or would they be able to navigate the exercises more easily? Unless I actually come across the opportunity to do that kind of testing I may never know. However, I will be making some necessary changes to the presentation to begin to adapt it more thoroughly to my thesis work.
After the group exercises I left them with an example of a product that already integrates images with words to help teach language. This product is
Rosetta Stone. I highly recommend trying the demo to see how it works for yourself. It is a very interesting way of learning a new language and quite effective.
