Thriving in Academe

Tales from Real Life
Reflections on Visual Learning

As an art teacher, it's my job to be aware of the visual sense, but a recent experience in the college's physics lab with a visiting group of administrators and trustees reminded me how important it is in other disciplines as well.

A first-year instructor, Tom Carter, demonstrated a new system of teaching basic physics concepts to the visiting group. But instead of using calculations based on a vague word problem, he used sensors and computers to let the students—and visiting dignitaries—observe a given graph of motion, direction, or acceleration and then try to duplicate it by moving in front of the sensor—taking physics principles from the abstract to the concrete.

Seeing senior administrators stumble like red-faced high school freshmen in their first dance class was funny—even for the participants. Feet went in all different directions, and bodies moved awkwardly like beginning dance students as each tried to match the displayed graphs. While the lesson was amusing, it was also useful as an educational tool.

The participants left with an understanding of the relationship between a displayed graph and the action the graph was intended to represent. The graphs no longer represented an abstract depiction of an equation out of a manual. They represented real activity. The students understood the graphs rather than merely understanding how to replicate them. The visuals had promoted effective learning.

— Charles Boone
College of DuPage

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