"TEACHING TABLES II:" Teaching Visual Communication: A 20-Year Journey from Traditional Classroom Instruction to Integrated Partial Distance Classes

Abstract

In 1988, I was asked to teach a core course in Theories of Visual Communication for a Masters program in Telecommunications. The course goals were to introduce students to the manipulation of images and sounds through the examination of physical and psychological perception theories, effects of culture and demographics on how one perceives images, new versus old technologies and how each uses/reuses visuals, and the ability to apply visual communication theories.

In 1995, after teaching visual communication in a traditional classroom situation with little text support and cumbersome forms of media to demonstrate concepts and theories, I looked for available technology and the best way to deliver the course information while allowing graduate students some flexibility in their class schedule. Susan Kehoe, then General Manager of GMU-TV, and I produced 12 video modules on visual communication. These modules replaced traditional lectures and applied visual communication theory in their creation.

Questions about the video module content were posted on Town Hall, a predecessor of WebCT and Blackboard. This asynchronous discussion became the class interaction replacing what would have taken place during class time. Students critiqued the modules and posted these critiques to Web CT, insuring that students watched the modules. This also forced them to think critically using visual communication theories.

Forty plus students were put into three groups. Each group was required to attend face-to-face class meetings every three weeks. This gave the instructor the opportunity for more one-on-one student time and to work on information, which could not be handled through web or video modules.

This partial distance form of teaching visual communication worked well for a number of years but video modules have a short shelf life and soon the module examples were no longer relevant. I returned to the traditional classroom to teach the class using snippets of the interviews and visual examples collected over the years. I kept the web based discussion and critiques.

In 2003, I added an undergraduate Visual Communication course containing students highly skilled in web design and video production. The graduate section of the course attracted graduate students in the Masters in Health Communication and the Masters in Video Based Production. The graduate students had well-developed organizational and scripting skills but low-level production skills. The undergraduates and graduates formed teams which helped not-for-profit organizations with their web sites and/or promotional video needs as final projects. Several of these final projects won on-campus awards.

Twenty years later, I am teaching FAVS 100 ââ¬â Film and Video Studies Colloquium to incoming freshmen and many of the same techniques I developed for graduate courses are trickling down to the technology savvy freshmen. In addition, we created a live to tape TV show (Studio A) with GMU-TV where we interview local filmmakers. FAVS students are the live studio audience. They participate in the creation and asking of the questions of these famous filmmakers.

This presentation will include clips from the video modules over the years, samples of the classroom interaction, clips from the Studio A show and a short piece of a graduate student final project for one of the not-for profit organizations.