Pictures Worth a Thousand Words: A New Approach in Graduate School

Abstract

Educators have shown increasing concern with capacity of students to engage in critical thinking and to exhibit correlation of constructs taught in to classroom to lessons applied to ongoing daily life. Graduate students in life span development were given two major assignments to study development over a person's life to that point in cognitive, cultural, emotional, moral, physical, and social development as well as application of major life developmental theories. One study was with a volunteer and was completed with traditional course paper format. The other study was on self-utilizing a Pecha Kucha format with inclusion on slides of personal photos and clip art that represented student development in these areas. Study results indicated increased efficacy of the presentation with integration of visual images over written reporting for to increase interest of students, to encourage exploration of symbols that uniquely represent the student's life as they add their meaning to the symbol, and to strengthen development of their own collaboration between eyes, left brain, and right brain. The study also indicated higher academic quality when integrating the arts modality than with the common challenges seen in written work such as depth and adherence to writing and APA style.