Low Spatial Learners Research Articles

VISUAL THINKING: ENHANCING ART CRITICISM SKILLS AMONG SPATIAL LEARNERS

Art criticism is one of the four foundational disciplines of Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE). It refers to an organized system for studying the work of art by looking and talking about art that involves making description, analysis, interpretation and judgments about artworks. However, most of the times, students do not know what to say, or how to go about saying it, or they might make the wrong judgments. Art students are mostly visual-spatial learners. Very often these students also end up writing in a dull way, with little sense of academic values. Therefore, visual imageries play an important role for these spatial learners who are skilful in representing, transforming, generating, and recalling symbolic, non-linguistic information. In the 21st century, teaching and learning with technology have diversified to complement the age of digital era where technology is made available to cater for all learning styles. A Visual Thinking Courseware (VTC) was designed and developed to help solve the problem of teaching Art Education by introducing systematic strategies particularly on visuals to enhance students’ Art Criticism skills. Built on Gestalt Theory, the objective of this research was to determine the best visual selections for the teaching and learning of Art Criticism between Random Visual Selection (RVS) and Sequenced Visual Selection (SVS). Research was carried out to determine the difference in students’ performance in Art Criticism between High Spatial Learners (HSL) and Low Spatial Learners (LSL) using these RVS and SVS modes. The methodology used in this research was quantitative and qualitative in nature. A quasi-experimental design was applied to collect the necessary data. A pretest and posttest for the two treatment groups was implemented. Six research instruments were used in the research to obtain the data namely, Index for learning Styles Questionnaire (ILSQ), Spatial Ability Test, Pretest and Posttest, Courseware Evaluation Form, Art Criticism Rubrics and Critical Thinking Rubrics. Sixty-three post degree education diploma students participated in this study. This research indicates that there are significant difference in students’ performance in Art Criticism skills between High Spatial Learners (HSL) and Low Spatial Learners (LSL) using RVS and SVS. Data analysis showed that among HSL students, the RVS mode helped them to improve Art Criticism skills better than the SVS mode. For the LSL students, the SVS mode helped them to improve their Art Criticism skills better than the RVS mode. Therefore, it can be concluded that regardless of the visual selections, Visual Thinking Courseware used in this research enabled students to criticize better and help improve their Art Criticism skills. Keywords : Visual Thinking, Spatial Ability, Art Criticism, Art Education

When, and for whom, analogies help: The role of spatial skills and interleaved presentation.

Understanding many scientific phenomena, processes, or systems may be especially dependent on a student’s ability to visualize or manipulate spatial information in order to construct mental representations. One instructional technique often included in science texts to help students to understand difficult concepts is the use of concrete or familiar analogies. Two experiments tested whether individual differences in spatial skills may impact the effectiveness of learning by analogy, if an analogy might particularly improve the learning of low-spatial students, and if the way in which the analogical comparison is presented matters. In these studies, students read a text about the processes and causes of the global weather phenomenon known as El Nino. For some students, the text also contained an analogy that compared El Nino to the inflating a deflating of a balloon; this analogy was either presented at the beginning of the text or interleaved throughout the text. Across both experiments, results indicated that spatial skills generally improved learning from a text about El Nino, but that interleaving an analogy changed the relationship between spatial skills and learning, and improved performance for low-spatial learners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Research-based principles for the design of instructional messages

Multimedia explanations are communications using words and pictures to explain how something works, including animation and narration in computer-based environments or text and illustrations in book-based environments. A cognitive theory of multimedia learning reveals a concurrence requirement for meaningful learning, in which corresponding verbal and pictorial representations must be held in working memory at the same time. Based on a theory-based research program, I propose five design principles: multimedia principle, to use words and pictures rather than words alone; contiguity principle, to place words close to corresponding pictures on a page or to present narration concurrently with corresponding animation; coherence principle, to minimize extraneous words, pictures, and sounds; modality principle, to present words as speech rather than as on-screen text; and individual differences principle, to use these design principles particularly for low-experience rather than high-experience learners and for high-spatial rather than low-spatial learners. Multimedia messages offer great potential for improving the effectiveness of communication, but only to the extent that their design is based on theory and research.