Exercises for Using the Visual Role in Different Disciplines

by Sarah E. Baker, MA TA / WAC Assistant

Try this: consider the visual elements of your syllabus.  Look at the headings, the spacing, the fonts, capitalization, use of bold and italics.  If students were to glance at your syllabus for visual clues, would they immediately understand the hierarchy of importance, would they notice first what you think is most important without having yet read the content?  Do the same for assignments: well-placed visual clues (bold, italics, underlining, bullets) can help students understand better what you want.

Sciences
The sciences traditionally use a wide variety of graphics, but the gap may lie in the spaces between the textual and the visual.  To combine them for effective assessment of critical thinking and synthesis, have students describe, using both written and graphic instructions, how to build something and then see if another group can accurately reproduce their results. 

Based on the degree of success, students can then address which aspects—textual, visual, both—need to be modified and how to produce the desired result.  The textual and the visual elements should be codependent rather than discrete.

Business/Communications
Have students analyze a range of traditional business documents and how they look, so that they learn to recognize at a glance what kind of document they are looking at and are expected to create (memorandum, press release,  etc.).  By becoming familiar with format and design elements before tackling content, students have established an initial zone of comfort so that they are not battling all elements when creating these documents.

Arts
Similar to the sciences, in the applied arts have students describe in writing a design or drawing, and then have another student reproduce it.  This helps students translate the visual to the textual and engages them in the conceptual and concrete language of the discipline, not merely its application. In Music with notation and lyrics and in Dance with choreographic diagrams and explanations, the visual and the verbal are continually blended.  Asking students to do one without the other so that each element, visual or verbal, stands on its own can help them strengthen the link between the two.

* Exercises adapted from Childers, Pamela B. “Teaching Writing in a Visual Culture Across Disciplines.” Ed. Pamela B. Childers, Eric H. Hobson, and Joan A. Mullin. ARTiculating: Teaching Writing in a Visual World.  Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1998. 76-86.