In our Personal Experience Insights series, members of the Everspring Learning Design department share first-hand accounts of creating online learning content and meaningful takeaways from their professional experiences.
Sam Carlson is a Senior Instructional Designer on the Learning Design team at Everspring. He has 15+ years of experience designing learning environments in higher education and cyber security training. Sam has a master’s degree in adult education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Image selection can be a fun, yet challenging, aspect of course design. This task must be approached with careful consideration. Images—even when placed with good intent—can disrupt, distract, or anger an audience. When learners are unduly focused on images, knowledge acquisition can be negatively impacted. When creating online courses, faculty and instructional designers must be aware of potential biases. It is possible to potentially overlook an issue with an image and how your audience will interpret it.
In learning environments, learners tend to notice specifics or patterns within decorative imagery, especially when imagery contains content they relate to or identify with. I learned this while I was designing a cybersecurity training course. We designed a workplace security module that followed the day-to-day office routine of a central character. Each time we showed this character, they left an area of their workplace insecure. Our trainees were then prompted with decision-based questions where they would choose the correct course of action to remedy the situation.
This module was received well by the team, internal stakeholders, and most of the customers. Customers were happy to have a module that taught their employees how to secure their workstations. About six months after the training’s release, the product manager called a meeting. Our team learned that one of our customer’s employees was offended by this module. The feedback they gave was, “Every time you show this gender, they are doing the wrong thing.”
Immediately, we realized we were so immersed in the actions and the teachable moments that we did not consider how our audience might perceive and relate to this character. We decided to revise the module to have a generic, unnamed character, who never appeared on screen. We focused on images that represented actions or objects, rather than the character performing them. For instance, instead of showing the character propping open the secured entrance to the building, we simply showed the propped open entrance.
I frequently avoid using human imagery in my designs to ensure that I don’t introduce any unintended biases that might distract the learner. Instead, I draw inspiration from other areas. While sometimes challenging to find, inspiration can come in many forms and from many places. It might not always originate from the most obvious option for your design. However, if you seek out inspiration—if you explore the known and unknown—inspiration may come to you.
When I select images for a course, I think about my past experiences where I collaborated and worked with artists. Whether it was learning directly from them, helping them refine their existing processes, or receiving feedback on my own artistic endeavors, their thought processes and inspiration made a lasting impression on me. I also seek inspiration from known facts about the course, institution, or faculty member. This inspiration can be drawn from:
- The course and module names
- The course assessments
- The faculty member’s personal interests
- The institution’s mascot, buildings, and branded colors
- The institution’s geographic location
My approach with images is to create a peaceful place for learners to engage with the course content. The following are examples of approaches I have taken in selecting images for specific courses:
- I designed a customer relationship management course that is decorated with macro photography of yellow sunflowers, red feathers, white oyster mushrooms, and blue ice. All images are reflective of things found in the state as well as the school's colors and mascot.
- I used photos of Shenandoah National Park in a business modeling course. This was the faculty member’s favorite vacation spot. I paired images of the park with the module titles. For example, a module titled “Control Flow and Functions” included an image of a cascading waterfall, and a module titled “Input and Output” featured a historic mill’s waterwheel.
- I developed an accounting course titled “Driving Organizational Performance” where each module contained a unique case study. These case studies focused on companies that produced teddy bears, ice cream, and racecars. The modules were decorated with images that represented the products produced. The racecar images matched perfectly with the course title.
- I followed a unique approach when working on a real estate investment course. I decorated the course with photographs of cities where real estate investment opportunities exist. There are daytime cityscapes for lecture pages and evening cityscapes for practice exercise pages.
- I leveraged the Everspring Creative Services team to create custom graphics for a machine learning course. During a discussion with the faculty member regarding course images, they emphasized creating a safe, fun, and cute spot for learning. The end result was a small, cute, robot highlighting each module’s title.
When designing your next course, consider where your inspiration lies. Is it in the course itself? Is it in a conversation you are going to have with a teaching assistant, a colleague, or an instructional designer? Is it found in the world around you? Wherever it is, I can assure you it is out there. There is an ah-ha moment waiting for you, that will not offend, or distract, but rather inspire, create peace, and spark curiosity as to how all of this ties together.