Visual Literacy and Creativity
The following resources are designed to help you assess and develop your students’ visual literacy and creativity skills.
All our resources are available for free educational use under a Creative Commons licence. You are welcome to link to them, use them and adapt them if necessary for your students, but please acknowledge LearnHigher as authors.
Text-scrolling with David Middlebrook
A live demonstration of the text-scrolling technique, which supports student comprehension of and engagement with reading and writing, through a multisensory, interactive approach that builds student confidence in academic reading and writing.
This is Episode 11 of the Learning Development Project podcast, where Dave discusses in much more detail about the ideas behind text-scrolling and further ways in which it can be used. This episode and all previous ones are available at The LD Project podcast.
Resource Duration: 17 minutes
Types of media: Video
Excelling at critical analysis: a 3-stage method with an image
The aim of this activity is to clarify the difference between descriptive and analytical writing and emphasise the importance of research-based argument. Participants engage in an interactive 3-stage exercise that interrogates a (visual) text in order to generate a piece of academic writing.
Resource Duration: 60 minutes
Types of media: Handout/s
What are Digital Capabilities?
To reflect upon the digital capabilities which are important to you
Resource Duration: 3 minutes
Types of media: Video
Learn Hacks
The animations are all based around the themes of productivity, curation, discovery, collaboration, impact and transferable skills. It is to highlight the many ways students can engage with technology to improve their learning experience.
Resource Duration: 3 minutes
Types of media: Video
Visual Learning website
A website hosting a number a number of staff and student resources to support the development of visual learning
Resource Duration: 120 minutes
Types of media: Webpage
Notemaking: ten top tips
An informative mindmap showing the top ten tips for notemaking.
Resource Duration: 15 minutes
Types of media: Helpsheet
Draw to Learn
A workshop designed to show how drawing and visually representing objects or themes can help to support learning and increase creativity. Includes links to the theory behind creative/visual practices.
Resource Duration: 180 minutes
Types of media: Handout/s
Free writing
A resource which would be particularly useful for staff teaching on a creative writing programme. Includes two structured writing exercises and information on free writing.
Resource Duration: 15 minutes
Types of media: Webpage
Six steps to success
A presentation outlining a whole new approach to successful study. The six steps are:
S = Study Techniques and practices
O = Overview
C = Creativity
C = Communicate effectively
E = Emotions
R = Review, review, review
Also includes a booklet for students’ reference, and some suggested activities to follow the presentation.
Resource Duration: 41 minutes
Types of media: Handout/s