It is the age of visual information. Visual contents play a very important role in every part of life. People get knowledge easily from visuals as compare to other sources of information. It is easy to learn things through visuals and due to this reason there are almost 65 percent people of the world use this approach to learn things. Same is the case in eLearning, it is the key concept to attract user’s attention and engage people in eLearning courses. Moving and still images have been included in learning materials for decades, but only now has faster broadband, cellular networks, and high-resolution screens made it possible for high-quality images to be a part of eLearning visual design. These visual ads can be design in different forms like images, charts, maps, diagrams, video and other options of illustrations like these mentioned above.
There are numerous advantages of using visuals in eLearning contents few of these are given below:
• Easy to understand
• One picture is worthy than thousands of words
• Simple and comprehensive way to spread knowledge/message
• Stick in long term memory
• Trigger emotions
• It is easy to motivate learners through visual ads
• Saves time and extra details
• Used incorrectly can deter learners
• Improve comprehension
Visuals are not only important to use in eLearning contents. It is the best way to improve communication with the addition of visuals to your communication.
Following are the advantages of visual compunction:
• Help users who are illiterate and are not able to read text. The best example is information at air ports and other public places.
• Helps in oral communication
• Helps in quick decision
• It is the best way to pass message to the audience in short time and avoid unwanted explanation in communication.
• Prevents wastage of time while communicating
• Helpful in classrooms to convey lots of information in short time
• Simple presentation
In real life it is best to use visuals, but if you look on the overall picture then you will realize that it is not simple to do this kind of job, because there are various elements associated with this. Means there are lots of disadvantages besides its positive aspects.
• Costly, making graphs, charts and other type of visuals takes lots of time and efforts, in this sense it is costly to develop visual ads.
• Wastage of time, means it takes a lot of time to design and develop visuals sources for conveying information and eLearning contents
• Creates problem for general readers
• It is considering as the incomplete method of communication
• Complex presentation
• It is only suitable for small amount of information and not suitable for showing large amount of information.
