The research is in: the use of visual media in the classroom enhances learning and retention. Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. With visually rich multimedia, students learn faster, remember better, and can apply their understanding and skills to new situations. Illustrations contribute to interest and enjoyment, affect attitudes and emotions, and provide spatial information that is difficult to express in words. Groups using illustrated texts (versus text alone) perform 36 percent better on tests! Moreover, when teaching is based on appropriate images with voiceover narration, recall and retention are boosted 42 percent and transfer is increased a whopping 89 percent!1

We all know that when you’re trying to convey an object, using a photograph, video, or showing the actual object is going to be more precise and concrete than describing it in words. In fact, at times, the words may conjure up a completely different image than the object(s) they were intended to evoke. For example, ask a group of students to make a picture in their heads when you say “hot dog.” Then show them the photo below and ask how many saw exactly that.

Based on their life experiences, whether you’re asking just before lunch, whether they have a dog and live in a warm climate, they are going to visualize different things. The words “hot dog” do not create the image. Words can only recall an object, image, or situation that the students have already seen and experienced.

The old adage “A picture’s worth a thousand words” misses the point. Actually, pictures and words serve two different functions. As little Eugene wrote after viewing a sunset like this:

Dear God,

I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool.

– Eugene

“I didn't think . . . until I saw.”

Eugene takes us to the heart of visual literacy. First the image, then the words. We can only verbalize what we’ve already seen.

Students today, often characterized as digital natives, are used to learning in a visual manner. By the time the average American reaches the age of eighteen, he or she has watched 22,000 hours of television.2 And then there are video games, movies, DVDs, media rich web and social networking sites, and the rest of the visual barrage. As Dr. Lee Pulos explains, learning is enhanced by this kind of visually rich environment. Comparing multimedia to traditional lessons, one student explained: “It was like the difference between driving down the highway at 30 miles per hour and experiencing meandering distractions versus driving at 80 miles per hour and taking in everything because you have to focus or you’ll crash and burn.”3

There is also the paradigm shift in attention spans. Silicon Valley corporate leaders are bemoaning the demands of what they call the new “attention economy,”4 in which the time allowed to engage interest grows shorter and shorter. Web designers try to create “sticky” sites where visitors will stay long enough to make purchases online. My colleague, marketing guru Shyamal Roy, warns against overly long download times because “7 seconds is the maximum response time before users lose interest.”

How do we as educators adapt our techniques to meet the needs and attention spans of digital natives “weaned” on rich media? Arguably the most powerful educational use of visual media is in breaking down the walls of the classroom, in bringing in new concepts and experiences and demonstrating techniques that the printed word cannot capture. Consider, for example, a course where a medical technician is learning to draw a patient’s blood. Which approach do you think would prepare that technician better:

1. Follow text-only written instructions.
2. Watch a video where a master, experienced technician is performing the procedure.

Which approach would the apprentice technician be more apt to recall in applicable detail? Which kind of training would you like the person to have who is poking your arm, trying to find a vein?

In the seminars and presentations I do around the country, Visual Literacy and The Power of Images in Testing and Learning are popular topics. Educators understand already (or comprehend quickly when shown the research and examples) that we must begin our lessons and infuse our content with images and visual experiences. Most agree that, in the best of all educational environments, every lesson would be not just enhanced but actually anchored by multimedia content.

When I ask educators what concerns they have, what would keep them from using something as powerful as multimedia in the classroom, the number one response is “Time!” I can certainly understand the time constraints. If you throw yourself into cyberspace and float around hoping for just the right visual resource, you will surely drown in the sea of possibilities. Type “seasons” into the Google search engine and you get 94,800,000 hits! How many of those include instructional visuals in any kind of useful detail? How can we make the process less time consuming and more efficient? Where do we get good material? And how do we integrate it into the classroom?

100% Educational Videos (www.schoolvideos.com) is a great place to start. Check out their beautiful video, Four Seasons.

Breathtaking images combine with uplifting music (Who better than Vivaldi to accompany the seasons?), powerful voiceovers and clarifying charts to reveal winter, spring, summer and fall in ways no student will ever forget.

NOTE: I’ve had the privilege of working with Educational Videos to produce a staff development video (DVD) on the power of Visual Literacy. We distribute it free with any purchase on my Website: www.educatebetter.com.

As educators, we’ve always known in our intuitive professional guts what advertisers and marketers get paid the big bucks to exploit: We remember what we see. If we as educators want to have a lasting impression on our students, if we want the skills and concepts we’ve taught to serve them throughout their educational and professional careers, we must go with our guts and move from being talking heads into narrators of great images. We must integrate powerful film and video into compelling and memorable lessons that bring together our diverse student populations and support the flowering of every learner. The research is in. The tools are available. Why would we teach any other way?

NOTES:
1. See Dr. Burmark’s new eBook, Visual Literacy, for these and other amazing research findings.

2. Dunn, Judy Lee, “Television Watchers,” Instructor magazine, April 1994.

3. Pulos, Dr. Lee, Quantum Learning.