“Infographic” Anyone?
I get a few of these infographics every month, but honestly, most of them have not been particularly intriguing from an education technology perspective. This one, however, is relevant, with 4 sections of ed tech related grapical information, offering an array of “facts” to consider. It also raises lots of questions.
A few interesting bits of information in the image stood out to me:
- Faculty Views of the value of social media for class by site: I’m pleased to see the percentage of faculty that see many social media tools as being either “very valuable” or of “some value” for a good number of these tools. At the same time, the larger question of “according to who?” rises in my mind (who was interviewed and how large was the sample group?).
A list of sources has been included at the bottom of the infographic, which is great, and lends it credibility. I did comb through some of the resources a little and I’m sure the source of this data is available, but after 5 minutes of trying to find this particular needle in that information haystack, I gave up. - 1 out of 4 college students have taken an online course. I’m actually surprised that the figure isn’t higher. It would be nice to know what year this “fact” is based on (again, I poked around a couple of these references, but didn’t have the patience to find which sections of which of the docs contained this particular factoid).
- 3000 accredited online colleges. In this case, I was surprised to learn that this figure is actually this high.
This mechanism as a learning and information exchange device is certainly interesting, and can raise some good discussion points. I would love it if there were some specific pages cited in the references, and/or some other connection drawn to which information came from which source. There were also some poor color choices for some of the graphical elements in the image, with colors for the text that are too light too to read in some cases.
++ Click to Enlarge Image ++
Thanks to Masters in Education.org for this image.
Have you used infographics like these in courses? Does anyone know a place to find a variety of nicely done infographics?
Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
The Changing Dynamic of Online Education
Facebook in the Classroom. Seriously.
2 Great Online Presentation Tools for E-Learning