‘The message is the medium’: Evaluating the use of visual images to provoke engagement and active learning in politics and international relations lectures*
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395717717229 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Author | David Roberts |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Learning and Teaching in Politics and International Studies |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717717229
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(2) 232 –249
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395717717229
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‘The message is the medium’:
Evaluating the use of visual
images to provoke engagement
and active learning in politics
and international relations
lectures*
David Roberts
Loughborough University, UK
Abstract
Globalization and digitization have combined to create a ‘pictorial turn’ that has transformed
communication landscapes. Routine exposure to visual stimuli like images has acculturated our
students’ learning processes long before their arrival at university. But when they reach us, we
expose them to text-centric teaching out of kilter with the worlds from which they come. More
importantly, emerging scholarship argues that such textual hegemony is out of kilter with how
they learn. This article describes a 3-year experiment to assess the veracity of such claims. It found
that student academic engagement was greater when apposite images were applied. In addition,
the experiment revealed that introducing imagery triggered active learning behaviours. The article
concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for politics and international
relations teaching.
Keywords
active learning, engagement, images, lectures, multimedia learning
Received: 8th August 2016; Revised version received: 13th April 2017; Accepted: 5th May 2017
Introduction
This article is concerned with the effect of the use of images in large group lectures on
engagement and active learning (AL). While emerging multimedia learning (MML)
scholarship has theorized substantial – even dramatic – increases in engagement and
*The title was inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s celebrated aphorism, ‘the medium is the message’.
Corresponding author:
David Roberts, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough,
Leicestershire LE11 3TU, UK.
Email: d.roberts@lboro.ac.uk
717229POL0010.1177/0263395717717229PoliticsRoberts
research-article2017
Learning and Teaching in Politics
and International Studies
Roberts 233
understanding when apposite images are introduced in university teaching, no empirical
research, until now, has tested this hypothesis in any discipline. This article reviews that
scholarship and applies a longitudinal control-group research exercise to the hypothesis
by conducting research with undergraduate students studying Politics, International
Relations, and affiliated subjects over a period of 3 years. The experiment yielded note-
worthy results for levels of engagement, but also prompted further research and data
showing a marked increase in the presence of AL practices. It also yielded unanticipated
results for neurodiverse/dyslexic students.
Rise of the visual
In the last two decades, as walls and polities tumbled from Europe to Africa, and as digi-
tization transformed communications, new digital capture abilities on cameras and phones
that needed no ‘film’ shortened the journey from snap to scrapbook. Simultaneously, the
range of material exposed to our lenses has expanded as more people accessed more
places than ever before, digitally recording them as they went. The static scrapbooks of
old were replaced by mobile social media like Facebook that redistribute billions of
images and expose them to millions in mere moments. Production and consumption of
digital imagery is now virtually unlimited. Like Felten (2008), Curtis (2013) maintains
that a crucial turn towards visuality is well underway. People have greater access to
cheaper digital recording and projection (free websites, for example) than ever before,
and more spaces are evolving to contain and represent them. By 2013, Facebook alone
was absorbing 300 million images per day (Cuthbertson et al., 2015: 158). Digital data-
banks marketing millions of images, like Shutterstock and 123RF proliferate, making
accessible an ever-growing repository of the visual. Moving images in the form of films
and TV miniseries, sports contests, and pornography are projected and consumed in most
parts of the world with reliable wireless reception (King, 2016; McStay, 2013; Mitchell,
2002). There has never been a more visual time for human beings (Goldfarb, 2002). This
is the era in which visual media have become ‘the main means of communication and
expression in postmodern culture’ (Tietje and Cresap, 2005). It is claimed that universi-
ties now face teaching ‘the most visual of all learning cohorts’ (Coats, 2006: 126).
Colleagues in politics and international relations (PIR) have been quick off the mark.
Cynthia Weber (2008: 138), for example, wrote that information in the visual era may be
‘expressed less through words (although these can be visual) than through still, moving,
and multiplying media (photography, film, web-based windows)’. Jack Holland (2016:
173) refers us to a multimodality of learning, and was inspired to develop and experiment
with visual pedagogies in part because ‘more higher education teachers [now] make use
of clips, episodes and even entire [TV] series as part of their modules and programs’. His
research showed that as part of scheduled teaching programmes, there was a role for mov-
ing images (in this case, The West Wing) as a means to the ends of developing critical
evaluative skills, and for developing visual literacy. He’s not alone: the US miniseries
‘The Wire’ is the subject of an edited volume (Deylami and Havercroft, 2017). Holland’s
research was framed intellectually by earlier scholarship proposing that the use of video
can increase student stimulation and interest in PIR (Weber, 2001; Weldes, 2003). Holland
acknowledges the cognitive dimension to such a process when he refers briefly to work
that has identified the brain’s ‘core intelligences’ to create an ‘affective’ process that
potentially offers substantial benefits for trying to understand and learn matters of PIR
and indeed other cognate areas. This work stands alone, but it was not located in a wider
pedagogic framework that considers, for example, cognition and the visual.
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