COMMON VISUALITY PRACTICES IN E-LEARNING

Despite the fact that images have always been an important part of our daily lives, many contemporary didactic approaches stem from the view that verbal communication is the primary source of information. Given this deeply rooted belief, methodologists (designers of educational content) continue to act as if visual elements could only play a secondary role in the teaching process. Nonetheless, these specialists admit that the perceptions of present-day students, who belong to the digital native generation are inclined to the visual, especially due to the popularity of the digital media, which mainly rely on images. Ever since the 17th century pedagogue Comenius, it has been known that images arouse one’s curiosity and enhance students' pleasure to learn. Whether spoken or written, bulk texts are tedious and tiring if they lack illustrations. Now that we live in an image-based society, researchers should be concerned with how to use the huge potential of visuality in the teaching-learning process. Behavioral psychology studies have shown that images are processed by the brain quicker than text and they are retained more easily than words. Furthermore, research results have proved that with both preschoolers and adults, learning is more effective if images are used as memory aids to acquire information. In the present article we shall reassess the didactic importance of visuality in the context of an image-dominated society. First, we shall define visuality from several pedagogy-related perspectives in order to reveal its usefulness for didactic approaches, based on the inventory of visual typology in the digital environment. Thus, we shall explain the concept of image, starting from the polysemy of the term (which includes optical, mental, sociological, psychological aspects, etc.) and we shall deal with “visual language”. We shall emphasize the intentionality behind images, namely that they are designed to carry information, social values and representations. Then, we shall provide a basis for further analysis by reviewing image typology and the principles of visual representations. The socio-communicative functions of images will provide us with the premises for reconsidering the use of visual elements in contemporary didactic approaches, in the context of the multimedia trend. Next we shall deal with the contextual significance of image as a visual argument in the didactic approach. Finally, we shall highlight the role of visuality in learning, starting from the explicit vs. implicit nature of images, and we shall put forward some criteria for assessing image use in order to prove the effectiveness of the visual component in contemporary pedagogy.