The Visual Connection

The Visual Connection: You Listen With Your Eyes is about using visuals to increase the probability of learning. It offers simple tips that can be deployed for little or no money to improve the digital delivery of training materials, presentations, eLearning modules and PowerPoint screens. There are wonderful synchronous and asynchronous technologies that allow us to reach around the globe. With these tools we can reach far beyond the twenty of thirty people in a classroom or the three-hundred to one-thousand in an auditorium. Most people are not using even a fraction of the technological power available to them. We must learn to effectively use the technologies we have. Visuals are a good and inexpensive place to start because visual images have power. The brain responds both cognitively and emotionally to visual stimuli. Visuals have the power to attract and keep the learner focused on your intended content. Visuals can help learners absorb information by affecting their attention, perception, visualization, and imagination. Learning is a complex activity and no one really understands exactly how we learn. Learning can be affected by three very influential areas: prior knowledge, context and expectations. Visuals can act as stimuli for most of us because most of us are predominantly visual learners. We can create screens and supporting materials that really help people learn if we recognize that the problems that exist in bad presentations are not the fault of tools like PowerPoint. Visual designers have known for a long time that if you don't use the CRAP principle (contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity), that is exactly what you will wind up with. We can create supportive learning environments that enhance, not subtract from, the probability that the learners will "get it". That is what teaching and learning is all about, isn't it? Whatever it is that we want them to learn, we want them to get it. Visuals can help us do that.