Visuals and Informal Learning

I’ve just finished Jay Cross’ book, Informal Learning. It’s based on the idea that most of the learning we do at work is not in the classroom. There is an overview of this idea on Jay’s blog, Informal Learning: What is Informal Learning?

One of the things that first got my attention is the book showcases the work of many of the visual specialists I reference and looked at in the development of VisualsSpeak. The work of Robert Horn, Grove Consultants and Xplane are featured in the book.

Chapter 8, Envisioning opens with this:

We humans are sight animals. We learn almost twice as well from image plus words as from words alone. Visual language engages both hemispheres of the brain. Pictures translate across cultures, education levels, and age groups. Yet the majority of the content of corporate learning is text. Schools spend years on verbal literacy and but hours on visual literacy. It’s time for us to open our eyes to the possibilities……

Envisioning results in insight, the capacity to gain a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation. Insight is to informal learning as study is to formal learning. It’s how you achieve your learning goal.

This is at the heart of what drives our passion for this work. Visuals have enormous capacity for deepening understanding and improving communication. The challenge is it is not easy to create effective visuals. It is another whole skill set. All of the visuals featured in the book are created by experts, with skills in facilitation, drawing, and the technical (photographic or computer) skills to create the output.

I love graphic facilitation, where there is a person drawing the conversation or recording the results visually. I wish I were better at it myself, but it usually takes reflection for me to be able to conceptualize how images fit together. People who excel at graphic facilitation and graphic recording can listen, conceptualize and draw at the same time.

VisualsSpeak puts the power of the visual images into the hands of the participants. Rather than drawing from words, the participants speak from the photographs. I think the combination would be ideal. Having the graphic representations emerge from the combination of the visual and verbal input of the people in the room. There are several graphic facilitators who have started to use VisualsSpeak. I look forward to talking with them about how they intersect, and will write about it when I do.