What is visual literacy, and what can I expect to learn from this poster?
Technological innovations are changing the way we read and think. Before the Internet, most learning environments, whether formal or informal, required students to deal with one medium of communication (print, visual, audio, etc.) at once. The advent of "new media" has significantly changed the types of texts we encounter, however. For example, on one website, a person might encounter sound, images, text, and video. Websites do not, however, typically promote the reading of lengthy amounts of text. In effect, texts have become increasingly image-based rather than type-based. In result, instructors and librarians are actively seeking new ways to address the changes in the classroom in order to make course content relevant and engaging.
Visual literacy is the ability to view, interpret, critically analyze, and produce images. This virtual poster session will address the ways in which visual literacy, or the interpretation, evaluation, and creation of visual and image-based texts, is an essential skill for the 21st century. For teachers and professors, the need to educate students on the use and rhetoric of visual texts is paramount. The ability of an individual to parse the rhetoric of visual images is important in many aspects of daily life, and a critical awareness of the power of images increases awareness of the messages that bombard us even when we least expect it.
This poster suggests that university websites are filled with visual messages, and both high school and college students are the targets of this imagery. In addition, choosing (or not choosing) a college is a major decision in the lives of many students. For these reasons, university websites are great starting points for discussions of visual literacy.
How can I use university websites to teach visual literacy?
Take a look at each of the images that appear here. If they appeared on a college website, what might they say about the values of an institution? What type of students might the images attract? Who else might have an interest in these photos?
University (and higher education, more generally) websites are excellent objects for visual and critical analysis for several reasons. First, most college students are familiar with the college recruitment process. They have seen the websites of various colleges and have already looked at them with a somewhat critical eye. Moreover, they use their college's website on a frequent basis. Similarly, many high school students are interested in the possibility of attending colleges; thus, university websites are ripe for analysis. In addition, because colleges and universities actively recruit students, their websites are filled with many visual and persuasive messages about what life at their college is really like. For students, especially those in college, dissecting the ways these images do or do not reflect actual college life provides an incredible opportunity for the discussion of the ways that pictures do sometimes lie.
In a sample assignment, a librarian or instructor might briefly assess with his/her class the images on the website for a local college (or the college where the students are attending). Using this website as a model, a teacher could then instruct students to look at the websites of several different types of colleges and/or universities. For example, a student could be asked to compare the visual messages of the webpages for a community college, small state university, large state university, private liberal arts college, and a large private university. Students could be instructed to pay particular attention to the portions of the webpage that address prospective students as well as the ways that images portray the college experience.
Specific questions that students could ask/answer about university websites include:
1. What do the images on the site convey about what students do in college? (i.e. Are the students portrayed working diligently in the library? Or are they portrayed cheering at a football game?)
2. How do the images reflect the student body of the campus? (i.e. Is the population diverse? Homogenous? Wealthy? Older?)
3. What story do the images tell about university life?
4. Why were these images chosen? How do they serve the university? The students? Alumni?
5. What images might better represent the university experience? Are these images honest? Persuasive? 
6. Are other types of media used on the page? If so, what kinds? How does the additional media supplement the images?
7. What is the purpose of a university's website? What power do images hold with respect to that purpose?
An instructor might then conclude with a discussion of the ways this type of analysis could be used on commercial products and advertising. These same types of questions can be applied to most of the visual images students encounter; university websites are merely a starting for the discussion of visual literacy.
Bibliography
All of the images used on this page are stock photos, courtesy of SXC.
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