teaching

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) recently released Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. These standards define visual literacy as “a set of abilities that allows an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.” As you might expect, this aligns closely with the VRC’s mission to help instructors and their students find, create, and display images.

The seven standards listed below, as well as performance indicators and learning outcomes, are detailed in the report:

The visually literate student determines the nature and extent of the visual materials needed.
The visually literate student finds and accesses needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently.
The visually literate student interprets and analyzes the meanings of images and visual media.
The visually literate student evaluates images and their sources.
The visually literate student uses images and visual media effectively.
The visually literate student designs and creates meaningful images and visual media.
The visually literate student understands many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and accesses and uses visual materials ethically.

Contact the VRC to discuss how we can help your students meet these standards!

Via Derivative Image.

A recent blog post from the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the differences between social networking sites Facebook and Google+, and some of the potential uses for Google+ in the classroom:

Facebook does allow some selective sharing, but doing so is difficult to comprehend. As a result, many professors have decided to reserve Facebook for personal communications rather than use it for teaching and research… In Google Plus, users can assign each new contact to a “circle” and can create as many circles as they like. Each time they post an update, they can easily select which circles get to see it.

See also an article from journalism professor Jeremy Littau on “Why Lehigh (and every other) University needs to be on Gplus. Now.” His explanation includes a plan to hold virtual office hours using the Google+ Hangout feature.