Instructor-provided summary infographics to support online learning

Abstract

Infographics are a visualisation tool that can be used to improve retention, comprehension and appeal of complex concepts. The rise of infographic use in education has facilitated new forms of application and design of these tools. Instructor-provided summary infographics are a new form of infographic, whereby key learning objectives and content are summarised in graphical form at the end of a lesson. However, it is unknown whether these types of infographics can support learning in online environments. This exploratory research investigates student perceptions, retention, applications and activity generation of instructor-provided summary infographics in a massive online learning environment. Using both post-course learner survey data (n = 1,899) and text mining analysis (n = 72,490 words), results present how learners perceived instructor-provided summary infographics as useful and appealing for retaining, clarifying and understanding learning concepts. The research contributes a novel understanding of summary infographics in online learning environments, and supports their use as a design tool for educational delivery in the online space.

Keywords:

• Instructor-provided summary infographics
• infographics
• Massive Online Open Courses
• visual learning
• summaries
• online learning

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts of FutureLearn for providing the platform and data from which this paper reports, the lecturers involved in the development of the MOOC, and Sarah Bowman who had invaluable input into the infographics development.