People typically select images based on styling, contrast colors, realistic quality, overall visual appeal, etc. It is undeniable that these aspects are important, but they have little to do with the effectiveness of a graphic in helping an individual learn.
One can use abstract images to make the course look attractive, but is it really necessary? Can these images actually help learners progress? If not, then they are of no use. People employ different abstract or irrelevant images in their courses.
But what makes an image effective is its type and how it is used to relate to the content. The visual memory of human beings is amazing. The human brain forms a mental image of things it observes, which as a result helps to retrieve things they have noticed.
Docebo, UKG Pro, and Trainual are a few LMS that have various features to add value to your content of the course. LMS has various options to present your images and other graphic elements you need to add to your course.
Here are the types of images and how to use them while developing the content of the course.
Representational
These are the types of images that are used to represent the actual form of an object. It can be an image of a musical instrument, machine part, human organ, or even screenshots that show an example of a filled form, application status, or anything that is understood by actual appearance.
Organizational
When you want to explain something which is a step-by-step process, you use these images. This image will show the organized form of something. You can also use these types of images to let learners understand the “how to?” of a process. As an example, how to assemble a folding table? How to draw a girl? This type of explanation can be shown in an image for better understanding a learner.
Relational
Relational images are used to show statistical connections between two or more objects. Examples of these types of images are pie diagrams, charts, and bar graphs. These are useful for comparing something with another or for analyzing it. This can be a good way to explain things. Can one use these images to show how much water we use? Job classification based on education, land area divided by government, or revenue of the company in two different years are all examples of relational visual information.
Transformational
These are the images that show the progression of one thing to another or are explaining the change that occurs with time. You can add these images to let students understand the evolution of man, the development of the seasons during the year, the development of an embryo, or anything where you want to show the before-after of a process.
Interpretive
Explaining something that is a structure within a structure can be difficult. To make it easy, one can use interpretive images for explaining. You can use it to explain parts of a machine, human organ function, or anything that can be explained by illustration.
Conclusion
Remember Sherlock Holmes? His superb skills depended on his visual memory and common sense. Well, some people are born different. But by using visual memory, people can advance in life. To make your course content beneficial for your learners, you must incorporate informative images. Anything that adds more value to the content of the course is never a waste. It will increase the learner’s curiosity and interest in learning.
