CRAP (lovely name)
The following is a brief overview of the 4 basic principles of design :
C R A P
Reference: Williams, R. 1994, The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Peachpit Press, USA
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Contrast
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Contrast can be the most important visual aspect of a page. The principle is to avoid elements on the page that are merely similar – if they are not the same – then make them VERY different.
Purpose:
To create interest
Aid in the organisation of information
Supports visual hierarchy
Eg. use of colour
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Repetition
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Repeat visual elements throughout – colour, shape, etc. Develops organisation and strengthens the unity.
Purpose:
To unify and add interest
For consistency
Eg. navigation, colour identifiers, layout – anything your learner may visually recognize.
Avoid repeating the element so much that it becomes annoying and distracts from the message
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Alignment
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Nothing should be placed on your page randomly. Every element should have some visual connection with another element on the page.
This creates a clean, sophisticated look.
Purpose:
To unify and organize your page design
Be conscious of where you place your elements – always try to find something that aligns them
Avoid:
More than 1 type of text alignment on the same page
Don’t always centre align
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Proximity
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Items relating to each other should be group close together. Items in close proximity become one visual unit rather than several separate, unrelated units.
Purpose:
Reduces clutter and confusing your reader
Organizes information – reduces cognitive load
Logical information is more likely to be remembered
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PRINCIPLES OF COLOUR
Understanding Colour
Review the Colour Matters site and determine why some colours appear to hurt the eye!
From the same site – Color Matters – explore how computers generate colours and what this can mean to your multimedia images:
The Psychology of Colour
Some colours make us happy and others, sad. Colours have the ability to provoke a psychological reaction. Look at the objects around you: their colours have been chosen specifically because they create a mood or an association for the viewer.
Because of their power to provoke reactions in us, we use colours for their symbolic meaning. It is no accident that fire engines are painted red; red is a hot colour and denotes the idea of danger. Police uniforms are blue; being a cool colour, blue projects the idea of being under control, being calm and collected.
You can use colours in your visual designs to convey a mood, create an association or express your feelings about a particular event, activity or object.
Choose colours to convey the following:
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Aggression
Friendly
Solid
Weak
Serious
Depressed
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Selecting Colours
Many things will affect your choice of colour. Consider the situation and choose your colours wisely. Think about the following factors.
Fashion
Colours go in and out of fashion. Bright colours are used to demand attention and make a statement. Designers of luxury items want their products to appear reputable and durable, and be seen to outlast the fashion of the day; gaudy colours such as bright pinks and yellows are unlikely.
The mass market
Strong and bold colours are used to attract the mass market. Advertisers usually use primary colours because they are the most appealing colours to the bulk of the population.
The environment
Australians live in a hot, dry environment so often use cool colours (such as pastel tints) in their buildings to make their physical environment seem cooler. In a European environment that is predominantly cold you tend to see warm, bright primary colours, creating a cheerful, cosy illusion.
Culture
Culture and history shape colour choice. If you visit Asia you will find temples painted in bright, primary colours. A European church is more likely to have more sombre colours.
Exploring Visual Design
Exploring Visual Design
“At the beginning of a project, the screen is a blank canvas, ready for you, the multimedia designer, to express your craft. The screen will change again and again during the course of your project as you experiment, as you stretch and reshape elements, draw new objects and throw out old ones, and test various colors and effects – creating a vehicle for your message…many multimedia designers are known to experience a mild shiver when they pull down the New… menu and draw their first colors onto a fresh screen…this screen represents a powerful and seductive avenue for channelling creativity.”
Tay Vaughan, 1998
Visual design takes the composite of elements: text, symbols, photos, colours, video, in fact any graphic element and much more, to communicate your message – it is your primary connection with the learner.
Visual design is the process of producing visual images that are able to communicate information to other people.
Visual images are made up of lines, colours, textures, tones, hues and shapes applied in a spatial composition. We are surrounded by visual images in our everyday lives. Each visual image is trying to tell us something.
To produce images that people understand, you need to consider the following:
What message are you trying to communicate?
What audience are you trying to communicate with?
What is the best way to visually communicate that message?
What are the elements and tools necessary to produce the visual image?
Complete the quiz in UTSOnline – Visual & Interaction Design – available in the Course Information tab.
Understanding Perception
When you look at a visual image you see lines, shapes, colours, tones, hues and objects in a spatial dimension.
The eye collects visual information from these images and objects and this information is transmitted to the brain. The brain interprets and constructs meaning from this visual information.
To design visual images that are meaningful to an audience you need to understand the way your audience actually sees. That is, how does the eye collect visual information and how does the brain interpret it? This line of inquiry is called the science of perception.
Discovering the way the eye works will help you understand how visual elements function in visual design.
Understanding Visual Communication
No two people ever see the same thing quite the same way. Cultural differences, the level of acquired knowledge, an individual’s psychology and socialisation will all affect the way we construct meaning from a visual image.
Physiology can also affect the way a person sees. The eye itself can have defects in the retina lens or suffer from colour blindness. The brain can also have its own problems that affect perception such as brain dysfunction, and alcohol and drugs.
To cater for these differences in perception you need to construct a clear, unambiguous image and know your audience well enough to construct visual images that they will easily recognise and comprehend. For example, a road sign needs to communicate its message to a wide audience instantaneously.
Review the image below:
Visual hierarchy
Read:
About Page Design and Visual Hierarchy from the Webstyle Guide
http://www.webstyleguide.com/page/index.html
Use the navigation on the right hand side.
How would visual hierarchy influence learners?
What is Multimedia?
How do you define multimedia in today’s e-Learning context?
It can be defined as tools engaging learners interactively.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura (1977) combines behaviourist reinforcement with cognitive processes for understanding the behaviour of others.
Bandura empasises the importance of observing and modeling – his 2 key elements for learning are: experience and expectations
§ Experience enables us to learn the consequences of our actions
§ Expectations are formed by our experiences
Four processes underlie this type of observational learning:
1. Attention: focus on the features of behaviour to be modeled
2. Retention: how well the behaviour is remembered
3. Reproduction: observed behaviour must be turned into action, practice and feedback
4. Reinforcement: to motivate learners to reproduce and perform the behaviours
How could you apply Bandura’s Social Learning Theory in an e-Learning context?
This could be done by having assessments, as it allows students to demonstrate what they have learnt. Students are provided back with feedback and are encouraged to communicate with other students. Students also learn by observing others. In a e-Learning environment, this can be done throught synchronous or asynchronous communication.
Read: Social Constructivism
http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism
Watch/listen to the brief lecture:
http://www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/impaticas/Social-Constructivism-PPT.html
Now – consider the learning theories in the context of the technologies you have researched in Module 1.
Which theories are suited or more appropriate?
The behaviourist and cognitive theories are more appropriate.
Constructivist Approach
Bruner’s Constructivist Theory:
Bruner (1966) based his theory on learning by discovery – information should be organised in a spiral manner that allows the learner to re-arrange and re-assemble content to create new insights.
According to Bruner, discovery and meaningful learning enhances recall and transfer of learning. The main objective is to build upon knowledge the learner already has.
“By creating learning environments that foster the self-development of learners as they explore a situation or problem, teachers can enable learners to arrange, rearrange, and transform evidence so they can gain new insights and experience a sense of achievement in making their own discoveries. The problem–solving strategies they develop are more transferable, as they have personal meaning and value in terms of the learner’s own purposes and intentions.”
Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work, Business & Professional Publishing,
Sydney.
Applying principles of Bruner’s theory:
1. Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and context that make the learner willing and able to learn (readiness)
2. Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the learner (spiral organisation)
3. Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and/or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given)
The Current Debate:
There is a great deal of current debate in education fields that can be summarized into distinct views:
1) Directed Instruction
Primarily the behaviourist and cognitive learning theories
2) Constructivist Learning
Characteristics of the 2 types of instruction:
Directed Instruction Constructivist Learning
- Focus on teaching sequences of skills that begin with lower-level skills and build to higher-level skills
- Clearly state objectives with test items matched to them
- Stress more individualized work than group work
- Emphasise traditional teaching and assessment methods; skills worksheets, activities and tests with expected outcomes
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- Focus on learning through posing problems, exploring possible answers, and developing products and presentations
- Pursue global goals that specify general abilities such as problem-solving and research skills
- Stress more group work than individualized work
- Emphasise alternative learning and assessment methods; exploration of open-ended questions and scenarios, doing research and developing products, assessment by portfolios, performance checklists
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How could you apply constructivist learning principles in an e-Learning environment?
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q Group work (collaborative learning)?
q Scenarios, case studies?
q Enriched learning environments (multimedia e-Learning)?
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A Humanist approach
The Humanist approach developed from the Cognitive but focuses on experiential learning and the assumption that the individual is ever seeking greater personal adequacy, self-esteem and self-actualisation.
Humanists emphasise the individual’s innate need to achieve personal worth, dignity and creativity and believe a better society will evolve by nurturing these qualities.
Humanist teachers can create a positive classroom climate and encourage the psychological growth towards the creation of self-actualising people.
Humanists believe that learners respond to their environments as they experience it – part of that is the person themselves – the self.
Feeling and emotions play an important part in learning.
What effect might e-Learning contexts have for the Humanist approach?
Humanists can establish links between the world and their previous experiences as they learn by doing. E-learning can provide resources for humanist learning style students which encourage reflections and self expression. For example it can encourage reflection in weblogs and creative application in learning and expression of information such as presentations which can include group work or can encompass a range of insights, discussion and feedback that enhances meaning and learning.
Principles emphasised by Humanist theory:
§ People learn by relating the world to their previous experience – they learn by doing
§ People learn in a free environment that permits and encourages development of potential, self-expression and self-determination
§ People learn co-operatively, which includes constructive feedback in a non-competitive environment
§ The learning that has most meaning for people is that which is contructed by individuals out of their experience
Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work, Business & Professional Publishing, Sydney.
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A Cognitive Approach
What effect might meaningfullness and insight have in e-Learning contexts?
Meaningfulness and insigh would be acheiveable in an e-Learning context because students are able to explore the content themselves. Therefore, E-learning context should be personalized for each student so that it would be more meaningful for the individual students. The context should also be structured from simple to more advanced, can use sections to divide, therefore the context should be interactive so that students can have the choice to proceed or not.
How can we use Advance Organisers in e-Learning contexts?
E-Learning should have an organised aim and structure to the course. For example, the subject outline for this subject, it is helpful for cognitivists as it has learning outcomes and assessment criterias.
A Behaviourist approach
Behaviourists attempted to study behaviour and learning from a scientific approach – only observable and measurable behaviours are reliable.
They explain human behaviour in terms of cause and effect – therefore learning is a modification of behaviour by application of stimuli, shaping of responses and the provision of reinforcement.
Learning is demonstrated in the response or behaviour of the learner.
TASK: Watch the following video from the Wharton University of Pennsylvania:
http://www.learningwiki.com/theory
Part 1 – Behaviourism
Examples you may be familiar with:
Classical Conditioning – Pavlov’s Dogs
The learner (dog) is conditioned (learns) to emit a response (dribble) which was originally a natural response to another stimulus (food) to a new stimulus (a bell).
Classic conditioning can also be demonstrated by our ability to generalize our responses to stimuli.
Eg. A household drill may cause a reaction for a person that has had an experience with a dentist’s drill!
What effect might generalizing have in e-Learning contexts?
Generalising could lead to learners becoming delayed in the learning process as they go at their own pace.
What is learning?
“The best definition is to conceive of learning as a relatively permanent change in behaviour with behaviour including both observable activity and internal processes such as thinking, attitudes and emotions.”
Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work.
What is your definition of learning?
I think learning is the building up of knowledge or learning something new. It is the process of understanding, retaining and applying and it can be a life long process.
