The Effect of a Blended Learning Course of Visual Literacy for In-service Teachers

Abstract

Aim/Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a 20-hour blended learning visual literacy course applied to in-service teachers. For this purpose, we designed the course to train the educators and the instrument to measure the level of visual literacy of participants before and after the intervention. Then, we found the differences. Background Visual literacy is essential for improving visual communication skills on in- service teachers because they use and construct visual material permanently. Hence, they need to be trained for developing visual literacy taking into ac- count their pace of life and specific needs. Methodology We employed a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. The area of study is Social Science, specifically Education. The population was in- service teachers who work in private schools in the north zone of Quito, Ec- uador. The convenience sampling method was used to conduct this pilot study of 51 teachers at one private school. The visual literacy course was de- signed based on the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards. The dif- ferences in the level of visual literacy were measured through a visual literacy test of 45 items made for this specific purpose. Differences between pretest and posttest were found after performing paired samples t-test on collected data.