Elearning The Role of Graphics

elearning The Role of Graphics

Bullet points, well edited running content without graphics makes you sick and tired. Graphics are the powerful way to make sense of information in today's world; media playing a vital role in the learning industry imagine if you eliminate the media from the learning industry... hard to believe.

We only can use modalities that are most comfortable for the learner. For example, most learners are either visual or kinesthetic, thus a brain-friendly environment will lean heavily on teaching methods that include visuals, models, or hands-on activities.

Studies show that about 98% of all incoming information to the brain comes through the senses. Add to that the fact that over 87% of the learners in the classroom prefer to learn by visual and tactile means, and you have a recipe for failure if the primary methods of teaching are auditory.

There are so many great Websites that encourage and teach higher-level thinking that we do an injustice to our students if we do not lead them there. Using media is the key to moving students to higher-level thinking. Our students are already familiar with using the Internet and many of the software programs required to reach such higher-level thinking skills as creativity, problem solving, comparison and contrast, and evaluation. We need to lead them to the best of the best in term of media and to provide feedback as they work. Real world applications, such as the physics software that explores how to design amusement park rides utilizing g-forces without damaging the body, are exciting and fun, but they also lead students into problem solving and decision making.

Outsourced Software Development

Outsourced software development is something many companies are now approaching as a viable alternative to doing all their software development work internally. This can be done for a variety of reasons.

Development costs can be reduced by approaching a software outsourcing company that specialises in the particular niche field that your project lies within. Alternatively, a company's need for bespoke software development may be rare and maintaining an internal software development department could be prohibitively expensive. Other reasons include cheaper personnel costs in other countries, the current difficulties with recruiting and temporarily expanding current development capacity for a limited duration. Whatever the reason, it is both large and small companies that are now making the move to software development outsourcing.

Whilst there has been a move to cheaper outsourcing solutions offered in other countries (India and some former Soviet states being notable examples) which can produce commendable results, there is still a need for local knowledge for certain types of application. A general purpose website for searching a database of information, where the database is maintained by local content editors, is a perfect example of a system where the value of the local knowledge of the developers is diminished. However, a complicated application containing decision flows based on an individual country's legislation may be difficult and prohibitively costly to completely specify for developers with no local knowledge.