Visual Research Methods for the Study of Higher Education Organizations

Visual Literacy Intervention for Improving Undergraduate Student Critical Thinking of Global Sustainability Issues

“…A student's ability to correctly answer questions is inversely related to the level of difficulty of the question, with intermediate and advanced questions posing greater challenges to students [33,46]. There is consensus that college students need additional support to develop visual literacy in order to be successful in college coursework and research activities [35,36,[46][47][48].…”

Studying similarities and differences in higher education organisations based on their websites – comparative methodological approaches and research potential

“…For example, organisational studies have been one research area particularly successful in contributing to this methodological and epistemological visual turn (Bell, Warren, & Schroeder, 2014 ). The use of visual methods in comparative and international education research seems to gain in popularity (Schreiber and Fischman 2017 ), yet in its sub-field of higher education research, visual methods remain under-utilised (Metcalfe, 2016 ; Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 ) despite the many potential uses of these methods in the area of understanding equity, diversity and inclusion in higher education, the construction and re-interpretation of organizational identities and understanding change in higher education (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 , p. 189). The lack of visual research in the study of higher education has been particularly evident in Europe due to the combined effects of two research traditions.…”

“…The importance of embracing the visual turn in the study of higher education is even greater given the observed trend of proliferation and increased importance of visually rich web-based communication by universities (communicating via websites and social media) (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 ).The last point and the observed proliferation of web-based communication in higher education contexts brings us to the second big turn which sets methodological challenges and potential for social research across similarities and differences – the digital turn. Social research in general and higher education research, in particular, has not only been challenged to fully incorporate visual data and research techniques, but also to respond to the digital turn and to go beyond visual into the sphere or multimodal data such as websites, social media communications and other elements of cyberspace in which individuals and organisations act and communicate.…”

“…In the context of wider organisational studies, which also include the study of higher education institutions, visual research methods are far more popular and ‘usually involve interpretation of visual cues with the organisational environment (pictures, maps, logos, films, web pages etc. ), or creation of visual materials in response to the organisational setting’ (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 , p. 154). This article builds upon a previous excellent overview of the application of visual research methods in higher education research (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 ) and focuses specifically on the potential of using institutional websites in the study of higher education.…”

“…), or creation of visual materials in response to the organisational setting’ (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 , p. 154). This article builds upon a previous excellent overview of the application of visual research methods in higher education research (Metcalfe & Blanco, 2019 ) and focuses specifically on the potential of using institutional websites in the study of higher education. By examining website analysis as one of the approaches in visual methods, the article is contextualised within the broader discussion on visual and digital turns in social research methodology and the ways in which researchers should embrace these new tendencies and related challenges.…”