Library Instruction and Adaptive Comparative Judgment to Foster Visual Literacy Skills

As students are increasingly required to consume visual information, so too are they expected to create such information. In a Midwestern research university, students in an engineering technology portfolio class assembled a visual career board and visual résumé. The instruction and research team collaborated to provide an active learning module on visual literacy that integrated library instruction with an assessment-based pedagogical approach called adaptive comparative judgment (ACJ). This exploratory case study demonstrated that the combination of library instruction with ACJ successfully supported students in gaining visual literacy skills. Additionally, it highlighted the importance of students developing the ability to articulate visual literacy principles.