ORGANIZER / MODERATOR: Maureen Burns, IMAGinED Consulting
PRESENTERS:
With a long history of archiving and providing access to educational images in a variety of media, visual resources specialists have always been attuned to the responsible and meaningful use of images. Our facilities are often key learning spaces for educators and students seeking assistance with associated technical, legal, and aesthetic matters. With twenty-first century teaching placing such importance on visual literacy, information professionals have added instructional activities on this topic to the repertoire of services being provided. To nurture this expanded range of skills and information literacies, visual resources curators partner with instructors and librarians in classroom training activities, offer workshops in how to create meaningful content with new technological tools, and take advantage of other face-time opportunities to promote visual literacy through consultations. Better understanding the expanding base of innovative research and current visual literacy competency standards assists with the identification of functional roles and enhances the effectiveness of such instruction.
What sort of content do we teach? What initial questions do we encourage students to ask? What specific research should become the primary focus? What tools might educators employ for instructing students toward adequate assessments of both preexisting and future cross-cultural visual communication? These questions will be explored starting with background information on cultural definitions, moving to pedagogical theory and the tools of evaluation, then using classroom content and projects to demonstrate how the constructs of graphic design and visual communication are shifting due to the infinite global spectrum. Various examples of how visual media are being used across the liberal arts curriculum will be explored and methods for partnering with faculty to build visual competencies discussed. Concrete ways to use image resources to deepen the integration of information literacy skills and concepts into interdisciplinary instructional situations, especially student orientations, will be demonstrated. Visual literacy standards will be examined with an emphasis on how they specifically apply to the profession and practices of visual resources. In the end, incorporating visual resources into teaching enriches learning by enlivening the classroom and deepening the understanding of core concepts through reflection.
