The Visual Classroom.

Students nowadays are living in an increasingly visual world, being exposed on a regular basis, for example, to the Internet, and a myriad of images within, such as pop-up ads, various websites and pictures on www.youtube.com, not to mention their proficiency with the use of text message icons. Therefore, if the visual world can be brought into the academic world of the classroom, then perhaps learning can be facilitated by making it more accessible to the students. Moreover, there is a great deal of research (see Avgerinou and Ericson, 1997), which strongly supports a visual approach within teaching and this presentation seeks to discuss how such an approach within the classroom can help to facilitate learning for students from a variety of academic departments. The presentation will discuss the ‘the visual classroom’ based on the following areas: • Presenting a theoretical background on the benefits for students of a visual approach within academic pedagogy; • Explaining what is meant by ‘visuals’, in terms of the different ways that this admittedly broad term can be interpreted and used within the classroom; • Giving examples of how I have used visuals within my own teaching of academic writing and students’ responses to such; • Discussing how visuals might be used within the teaching of other academic disciplines, to include the perceived advantages and disadvantages.