Creating Visual Teaching Aids
Who was it that said “a picture is worth a thousand words?” You know, they were right! The use of visual aids can be used to inform your students of many things. We humans take more information in visually, even when we are reading something, because it is processed and stored as a visual thought in our minds.
The main purpose in developing your visual aids is that they help you teach your training objective, so develop them around your main teaching points. However, be careful not to go overboard in designing your visual aids. The word "overboard" could mean here "overload" instead. All too often, in our efforts to save time or money on putting together our visual aids, we end up get carried away and overloading them with just too much information for our viewing audiences to process visually.
Realizing this only after that fact that it did cause your viewing audience to immediately go into some form of visual "overloading condition visually," this condition occurs when your viewers are presented with just too much information at any one time. What actually happens in many situations like this is it causes your viewers to become confused. Your viewers are now forced to focus their attention to the visual aid while trying decipher or speculate on what you're trying to show them. And that can take away from your presentation effectiveness.
Of course, the opposite is also true, by using too little information to make your point. Try not to overload visuals, find a balance, and don't overcrowd them.
It is easy to do! You’re in a hurry, grabbing whatever it is that you need to have an overhead transparency of, and then you run off to the copy machine and you’re done, right? Well, maybe. Okay, so next time, just plan ahead a little and think about the purpose of your visual aids. Remember to limit your overheads and slides to a few topics and sub-phases. This also applies to flip charts and any other charts or graphics you may use.
For now, continue on and read the rest, and then you will have a little better understanding of how we react to the information being presented to us and how we process it.
They are many different types of media available for use in our classrooms. With all of the many different types of media available that can be used, so are the opinions on how to develop your visual aids. Nevertheless, out of all those different opinions and strategies, they seem to have one thing in common, which has resulted into a few simple basic rules to follow when developing your visual aids.
We will discuss and review those rules. But, before we do, think back for a few moments about human behavior psychology and the way we like to process information we receive about new things. Remember the following points.
Kinesthetic People Like:
* Hands-on activities
* Question and objection time
* Small quizzes done in pairs
* To be busy
* To feel your enthusiasm
* Audience participation
* To touch things
Auditory People Like:
* A varied and well-modulated voice
* Statistics and facts
* Detailed descriptions
* Clear, loud voice
* Calm and organized talk
* Audiotapes
* To hear your enthusiasm
* To talk out loud so they can process what you say
Visual People Like:
* Overheads, slides, pictures, graphs
* Videotapes
* Demonstrations
* Broad overviews stated
* To see your enthusiasm
* Gestures
* Stories and examples that create a picture
* To see materials ahead of time
Remember to keep the way people prefer to receive their information in mind when you are designing or developing your visual aids. It is an important consideration you must consider because your visual aids can make or break your lesson, which can result into a complete failure of the overall effectiveness.
Now, continuing on, the most common types of visual aid equipment available for you to use are:
* Blackboard
* Marker board
* Flip chart
* Overhead projector
* Slide projector
* LCD projector
* VCR and Video tape
Regardless of what type of media you choose, most all of the experts have agreed on and recommend the following rules about developing your visual aids.
Rule 1: Use readable and consistent fonts, and stay away from the fancy stuff.
Rule 2: Keep to one or two major points per visual aid, and limit the use of subtopics text to a few phrases per subject.
Rule 3: Remember to use the "Kiss method" of "Keep It Simple Stupid."
Rule 4: Always add a control number and title to each visual aid used, where possible. This will help your keep your presentation organized and in sequence as you present it.
This article is courtesy of TLC Seminars, a company that has significant experience in building people skills with its presentation skills, basic instructor, and advance instructor training programs, www.tlcsem.com.
