Visualization in Advising

We academic advisers interact with new, traditional-age students who have been born into a world of animated, colored, highly visual symbols and artifacts. As Strauss and Howe chronicle in Generations (1991, p. 324-326), these students born between 1961 and 1981 experienced a world characterized by being “the most aborted generation in American history,” the most divorced generation, “less college-educated than its next-elders,” and “the most heavily incarcerated generation.” Thus, these students are tagged as being highly cynical. The experience of these students and their resulting attitudes and styles make them radically different in nearly every respect from their professors and academic advisers.

Surveys on college campuses indicate that more students remember music videos than lyrics. Current students are bombarded with thousands of visual images, and they devour the sophisticated graphics of computer games and the Internet, sometimes to the point of developing obsessions with playing games and surfing the 'Net.

Although we are aware of how visually oriented today's students are, the majority of resources for student success and satisfaction are standard 10 or 12 point type, single spaced. If we look around our offices, most of us see student handbooks, college bulletins, residence life guidelines, scholarship eligibility booklets, student conduct code handbooks, orientation materials, and schedules of classes. Students tell us these documents are boring, but we persist in creating materials in the modalities students respond to least. “We give students too much 'stuff.' 'Mind-numbing jargon,' and 'abbreviated college-speak.' This neglect of audience is the sin composition teachers always warn their own students against” (Beatty, 1996).

Affecting the learning of these students requires us to consider their styles and habits of mind as we design materials and activities. Education literature and research on student learning have agreed for a generation that “showing rather than telling” produces more effective learning (Hyerle, 1996). The greatest increases in learning appear to come from environments where learners are visually and intellectually engaged rather than sitting passively and listening. An anonymous quotation says, “Tell me and I will listen; show me and I will understand; engage me and I will learn.”

Research on visualization shows its effects in several settings. Fourth graders given images of objects outperformed their peers who were given the written names of the objects (Buck, 1973). Recent research has considered the use of videotape in classrooms (Snow, 1997) and the use of representation in learning mathematics and science (Greeno and Hall, 1997). Their research concludes that students learn by using representations to help them understand what they are reflecting on or working on. In mathematics, Greeno and Hall say students in fact learn to use constructions “that help them see patterns and perform calculations” (p. 365).

Research Study

This research study attempted to find a way to engage new students by using visualization during freshman academic orientation. The experimenters did not assume that students are visually literate because faculty in the arts at Penn State say that they are not. Although students use visual media for recreation, they are not literate readers of imagery.

To consider how we might use visual materials, we chose a segment of freshman academic orientation at Penn State where standard written bulletin copy is the material used. To prepare students to attend this orientation, the university mails each student a booklet describing the courses that meet general education requirements. Students are asked to complete a one-page worksheet and to bring the sheet and booklet to their orientation session. Because sessions are designed to introduce students to university general education requirements and to the scheduling of courses, the activities of all group sessions are premised on students reading the booklet and completing the worksheet.

The present study introduced visual materials into the presentation of general education and tested their effect on students learning the categories of general education. We hypothesized that the performance of students who used visual materials in a discussion of the requirements would perform better than students who had not used the visuals.

Subjects

Entering freshman students randomly assigned to freshman orientation sessions participated in the study. The orientation program invites students to campus, based on criteria such as the date the student accepted admission. Each day of the program, approximately 125 students from across the university participate in group information sessions in which 25 students work with a group leader. All experimental subjects were in a group led by the experimenter, and control subjects were in a group led by another group leader. The entire program runs for 42 days.

Method

Both the control and experimental groups participated in the standard activities for all information sessions. In these three-hour sessions, students are taught about the university, are given their placement test results, and are interviewed about their academic plans. All sessions introduce students to the university bulletin, general education requirements, the idea of planning an education, and the mechanics of scheduling courses. To practice scheduling, students collaborate in groups of three. The control group followed the format of the standard activities. On four days, the session leader held a discussion of general education and had students practice creating a schedule for a fictional student as usual. In addition, at the end of the session students completed the test instrument.

The experimental group followed the same format as all information sessions. During four sessions, students were given visual materials to discuss general education. Sets of laminated cards depicting each general education category were given to subgroups of three students. They were told to share the cards and look at them as the entire group discussed the requirements and the types of courses that meet them. For example, the arts card showed a dancer holding a pallet and brush, a skull, and a violin (Figure 1). Students were asked to name subjects that each object represented and to recall courses that they may have remembered from lists in the general education booklet.

Then the students used the cards as they participated in mock scheduling. Each subgroup was asked to select cards that represented requirements that a fictional student would try to meet in the first semester. The experimenter monitored the groups, asking them by referring to the cards to name the requirements the planned schedule would meet.

As the last activity of the group, students in both the experimental and control groups took a ten-item test to evaluate their free recall of the general education categories. Each item contained an abbreviated course name, number, and code identifying a university requirement. Students were asked to identify the general education requirement each item meets (Figure 2).

SPCOM 100A GWS ____________________________________________

STAT 100 GQ _______________________________________________

CLASS 045 GH DF ___________________________________________

ART 122W __________________________________________________

ECON 002 GS _______________________________________________

BIOL 011 GN _______________________________________________

ESACT 300 GPE _____________________________________________

BB H 013 GHS ______________________________________________

Results

Each student's test was assigned a score from 0 to 10, and the results of the experimental vs. the control groups were analyzed using the Mann Whitney test. A nonparametric statistic was necessary because the experiment assumed that the distribution of test scores for at least the experimental groups would be skewed right. Table One shows the descriptive data, with 7.3 the mean score for the experimental group and 5.0 the mean for the control group. Table Two shows the relative distribution of scores.

The Mann Whitney test showed that the difference between the experimental and control groups was significant at the 0.0001 level of confidence.

The results here are limited by virtue of the type of setting – a large research university that has selective admission – and the chance that the major effect of the study can be attributed to the experimenter. Both group leaders are experienced members of the staff who work in the team that creates the sessions and the materials used in them. The sessions are based on goals and objectives that all presenters share. In theory, if leaders have used the agreed- upon strategies for the groups, the visual materials should be the agent for the improved performance of the experimental group.

Discussion and Implications

The research study shows that language alone is not as effective as adding visual materials to information about academic abstractions such as general education. If we return to our offices and look at those shelves full of documents that we use to define the university experience for our students, we have a challenge. Many are written without attention to the audience and with few or no visual components. They all contain abstract ideas that we have to struggle to articulate even to ourselves.

How could we introduce visual components into academic publications and increase their effectiveness? Let's start with some of the pieces on most campuses: orientation course packets. Normally used in the crucial first six weeks, how much more effective would they be if they used visual materials to introduce students to the ideas that they state? One could look at all of our publications that are intended to advise students in some way and ask the same question. Our Web pages, we suspect, already have some visual complements. What could be done to improve them visually to enhance student learning?

If research shows enhanced learning (correlated to improved memorability and comprehension as well as a wider range of learning styles), then we need to use visualization to complement verbal materials to help our students see and understand the lessons of academic advising. If academic advising centers, campus-wide advising councils, and student affairs units partnered in using visualization, could we enhance student persistence in seeing their way to graduation? Much work remains to be created in this realm, but we should pursue it if we are committed to student success.