I love infographics, I really do. I’ve created a lot of them for blog posts, although I never got the vast numbers of eyeballs on them that articles about infographics claim. As I posted about them in the class discussion forum, I felt like a curmudgeon. How effective are infographics anyway? Should learning really be that fun?
Maybe it’s that I’m also taking a research course, or that I’m Donna and I’m a research-aholic, but I turned to the literature for a quick look at what’s being said.
This is the article I chose to look at: Bicen, H., & Beheshti, M. (2017). The Psychological Impact of Infographics in Education. BRAIN: Broad Research In Artificial Intelligence & Neuroscience, 8(4), 99-108. A section of the article is devoted to a nice overview of what infographics are, their origins (think USA Today), and an overview of their use in education. The authors studied a group of 163 undergraduate students, administering a survey to determine their opinions on infographics. Some of the statements in the survey with which the students could agree or disagree are listed below (bearing in mind English does not appear to be the investigators’ first language):
- I believe infographics motivate students to learn more.
- I always like to share infographics in my social media pages.
- If instructors use infographics in the class, students will be positively affected to learn.
- I believe infographics help students to learn the more complex content easier.
The result was that more than 82% of the students felt they learned more through the use of infographics. While this study doesn’t measure performance based on infographics in the classroom, it’s an interesting result.
Students like infographics. Anything that gets them interested in education is a good thing!
Curmudgeon no more!
Stay tuned for the journey.