Humans are visual creatures.
Going back a bit in time, vision was important to us on the African savanna to recognize predators and find food.
And although today most of us spend less time dodging leopards than our ancestors might have, it’s easy enough to see the importance of vision in our lives. How long do you go without watching a movie at the cinema, viewing a film on Netflix, or playing a video game? Or even consider music–don’t you often experience music in a music video, or while watching a stage full of dancers?
Why are so many of the dominant forms of entertainment visually oriented? Because, to return to our beginning, humans are visual creatures.
And so it makes a lot of sense to take advantage of that for workforce learning and development.
We’ll discuss this a bit in this blog post.
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The Dual-Channel Theory, established by Allen Paivio, states that humans process verbal information (spoken words and sounds) through a different processing channel that we process visual images (the “real world” around us, pictures, written text, etc.).
Using that as a foundation, the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, established by Richard Mayer, makes three points (source for list below):
So there are a few key takeaways from all this about visuals in eLearning courses for workforce training:
When all this is done well, the combination of verbal and visual information in an workforce training eLearning course, processed by two separate processing channels, helps people learn more at work. What’s not to like?
Imagine how the visuals in this sample video would make it easier for people to learn.
Let us know if you have questions about eLearning and visual design. We’ve got quite a few articles on the topic if you’d like to take a deep dive on the issue:
25 Graphic Design Tips for eLearning
How to Create Graphics for eLearning
And don’t forget to download the free guide below, too.
Learn the importance of using differing training delivery methods and get some tips for selecting the right training method for each training need.