An Exploratory Study Using Visual Thinking Strategies to Improve Undergraduate Students’ Observational Skills

To describe a teaching approach that incorporated visual thinking strategies (VTS) into an existing health humanities course and measure the effects on the observation skills of undergraduate health professions students. Visual thinking strategies were used to introduce students to a variety of health-related topics. Each week a facilitated 15-minute discussion was held about a work of art related to the day's topic. Pre- and post-course assessments were administered in which students were shown three images and asked to describe what they observed in each image. Student responses were evaluated using deductive content analysis with two different categorization matrices. The assessments also included six Likert-style questions. For matrix one, the most frequent type of observation was naming or identifying something. Growth between pre- and post-course assessments occurred in the following categories: what is happening, how it looks, and where it is located. The number of student observations for two of the three images increased. The majority of students indicated that the use of this visual art exercise was an enjoyable learning experience. In future studies, a larger sample size and inclusion of a control group could better demonstrate the meaningful impact of VTS on developing students' observational skills.