I. Regulations
Davis Division Regulation 522 sets forth the Baccalaureate Degree Requirements in General Education. Literacy with Words and Images (522.C.1) is a component of Core Literacies and requires 20 units of work in specified categories. Coursework in Visual Literacy (3 units) forms part of that requirement.
Regulation 523 sets forth the Criteria for General Education Certification of courses, stating: “A course in visual literacy improves a student’s ability to understand ideas presented visually and to communicate knowledge and ideas by visual means.” (523.C.3)
II. Interpretation
The objective of Visual Literacy is to provide individuals with the analytical skills they need to understand how still and moving images, art and architecture, illustration accompanying written text, graphs and charts, and other visual embodiments of ideas inform and persuade people.
Courses that meet the Visual Literacy requirement must stress the skills needed to communicate through visual means as well as the analytical skills needed to be a thoughtful consumer of visual media.
Certified courses will instruct students in the analysis and structure of visual images, by teaching students how to communicate their ideas in visual messages and/or by providing students with the critical skills necessary for understanding the persuasive power of images.
Departments and programs seeking course certification must identify the ways that their disciplines use visual evidence to generate and to test knowledge; they should identify discipline-specific models of visual literacy in already existing courses and develop courses that meet the requirement in discipline-appropriate ways.
Minimum Elements Checklist
Courses in the Visual Literacy must:
ME1) Identify the type of visual materials or media employed in the class. These may include still and moving images, art and architecture, illustration accompanying written text, graphs and charts, or other visual embodiments of ideas. Types of visual media considered to fall outside these categories should include justification.
ME2) Specify how the course enables students to think critically about visual materials.
ME3) Specify the ways in which students will use or interact with these materials throughout the course and how frequently they will be used in lectures, student work and/or examination and assessment.
ME4) Identify specific guidelines or metrics for evaluating the students’ understanding of visual literacy (e.g. through examination, written analysis, production of visual materials, and so on).
ME5) Demonstrate that achieving the minimum set of learning objectives of the literacy is an integral part of the class.
III. ICMS Submission Requirements
The Committee on Courses of Instruction (COCI) evaluates whether the course proposal satisfies the minimum elements checklist above. COCI uses the information provided in the answers to the General Education literacy justification questions and the Expanded Course Description. Departments requesting that a course be approved for this GE literacy must answer the literacy questions in the Integrated Curriculum Management System (ICMS), as listed below.
For this literacy, COCI evaluates the minimum elements as follows:
- ME1: Expanded course description
- ME2: ICMS literacy questions 1 and 2
- ME3: Expanded course description and ICMS literacy questions 1 and 2
- ME4: ICMS literacy question 3
- ME5: Expanded course description
- How will the course improve students’ abilities to understand ideas presented visually?
- How will the course improve students’ abilities to communicate knowledge by visual means?
- How will the instructors assess student competency in this GE literacy?
Departments may leave the “ICMS Justification” field blank, or use it to provide any additional information about the GE literacy for this course that may be helpful as COCI reviews the request.