Let’s Do Some Visual Design for Human-Centered Learning

Visual design has important implications far beyond attempting to make things beautiful, including how we learn and process information. The way a course looks or even feels can impact how people engage with it. Embracing teaching and learning from a design perspective - or even just honing in a few elements of visual design - offers rich possibilities for engaging students and helping to make the often implicit elements of a course more explicit, and thus more effective for teaching and learning.

And there’s perhaps a more base consideration: most faculty have enough to do beyond worrying about how to hire or find a graphic designer to create professional designs for their courses. Moreover, few institutions have support staff in place to scale branding and design for every instructor and/or every course. Even so, instructors who aren't design professionals can still create unique and engaging learning content, DIY-style.

In this session, through experimenting with a few design fundamentals - contrast, repetition, font and color - we’ll explore how design can make a big impact for students. Moreover, we’ll show how instructors can craft a unique brand and style that allows them to stand out or just feel good about what they have created. We'll also explore how visual design elements can support more accessible learning experiences for students with disabilities. 

We'll spend most of our time in this session doing hands-on work to help you practice and play with building good visual design elements. Bring your own materials to work on, or use some of the prepared materials we have provided! We'll also unpack some of the research supporting visual design considerations for learning, as well as share a plethora of our favorite open resources for visual design!