Warning: May Be Hazardous to Your Assumptions

Due to the nature of this post, the Depart­ment of Blog­ging requires that I begin with this state­ment:

Be aware that the ideas I’m going to share here (a) are under­cooked and need some addi­tional pro­cess­ing before they are com­plete, and (b) likely come from a vari­ety of other sources, so if I’ve not given the proper credit for every­thing here, please let me know in the comments.

On my flight back from ISTE 2010 in Den­ver yes­ter­day, I fin­ished read­ing Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. In it, Garr Reynolds presents, among other things, a con­cise expla­na­tion of the prin­ci­ples of visual design that one should use when cre­at­ing slides for a presentation.

Being an edu­ca­tor, I began to think about how those prin­ci­ples would look if we applied them to cur­ricu­lum design. Here is where my brain has gone with it so far. (And this is the under­cooked part. I’m sure some of these won’t or can’t work, and I’m sure there are ele­ments I’m miss­ing. Chime in on the com­ments to help me sort it all out.) My goal is to elab­o­rate on at least a few of these in future posts.

Sig­nal vs. Noise Ratio. This is about stick­ing to the mes­sage. What is the point or the goal of the cur­ricu­lum plan? If there is any­thing in the plan that gets in the way of that goal, elim­i­nate it.

Pic­ture Supe­ri­or­ity Effect. Peo­ple remem­ber pic­tures bet­ter than words, so in essence, this prin­ci­ple means show, don’t tell. Pre­sen­ters use visu­als to acti­vate emo­tion and con­nec­tion between the audi­ence and the con­tent. In terms of cur­ricu­lum design, I think we need to take it fur­ther. Not only should visu­als be an inte­gral part of every cur­ricu­lum design, but we need to ensure that learn­ers inter­act with and manip­u­late what they are learning.

Empty Space. A key to mak­ing visu­als cleaner and more effec­tive is to incor­po­rate white space. Reynolds says, “empty space in a design is not ‘noth­ing,’ it is indeed a pow­er­ful ‘some­thing,’ which gives the few ele­ments on your slide their power.” We tend to treat cur­ricu­lum as if we are pack­ing for a vaca­tion: get as much as we pos­si­bly can into the fewest num­ber of bags. Bring extra clothes in case of unfore­seen mishaps, and bring a big vari­ety in case the weather takes an unex­pected turn. Empty space in our cur­ricu­lum design might give stu­dents a chance to breathe and reflect.

Con­trast. Visu­ally we use con­trast to make some­thing stand out. When was the last time you saw a cur­ricu­lum where cer­tain ele­ments were delib­er­ately arranged to stand out against the rest? We notice and remem­ber what is different.

Rep­e­ti­tion. Visual pat­terns help a pre­sen­ta­tion audi­ence fol­low what is going on. Cur­ricu­lum should be designed the same way: in pre­dictable pat­terns that enhance the mes­sage with­out becom­ing trite and simplistic.

Align­ment. Again quot­ing Reynolds, “The whole point of the align­ment prin­ci­ple is that noth­ing in your slide design should look as if it were placed there ran­domly.” So often I have seen things dropped into the mid­dle of a unit that seem like it’s there just because. Align­ment means that every­thing in a cur­ricu­lum design is there on pur­pose and with a con­scious con­nec­tion to other ele­ments and other parts of the curriculum.

Prox­im­ity. Finally, clus­ter­ing related items together helps cement the con­nec­tion to the viewer. If the stu­dent has to expend energy try­ing to fig­ure out why a unit is struc­tured the way it is, then the struc­ture isn’t work­ing for the curriculum.

Okay, so help me avoid mak­ing all my read­ers ill by help­ing me cook this. What have I missed? Is this overly obvi­ous, or is there some­thing worth dig­ging out more?