Visual Literacies MOOC: Don’t Miss Our Upcoming Webinar Series and Youtube Channel

The visual literacies (ViLi) research project (https://viliproject.eu/) is funded by the European Union (Erasmus+) to specifically research visual literacies from a technology enhanced learning perspective. The project team, comprising of Julie Ann Sime and Chryssa Themelis from Lancaster University (UK) has researched, developed and refined a range of open educational resources (OER) so as to deliver two massive open online courses (MOOCs) on visual literacies. Over the next few weeks, the ViLi MOOC offers a series of webinars on visual design, virtual reality, tele-proximity and online identity. In addition, the project offers recordings of past talks on Youtube.

Participate in ViLi webinars:

To access the webinars, join the Visual Literacies project MOOC and follow links to webinars each week: http://mooc.viliproject.eu

25th October 12 pm (UK time)

Prof. Kirk St. Amant discusses Cognition, Recognition, and Visual Design – how the cognitive concepts of schemas, prototypes, and scripts and our perceptions of designs influence how individuals perceive, understand, and respond to different designs. (Louisiana Tech University, USA & University of Limerick, Ireland.)  

26th October 2pm (UK time)  

Danny Stefanic explores Why VR eLearning isn’t what you need next. A sanity check on the benefits of VR and where and how to deploy it for best results (CEO LearnBrite, Phoenix, USA).

Note: This seminar will be held in the virtual reality auditorium which can be accessed via the MOOC. 

30^th October 5pm (UK time)

Dr. Chryssa Themeli, Tele-proximity: Tele-community of Inquiry Model. Facial Cues for Social, Cognitive, and Teacher Presence in Distance Education. Tele-proximity is defined as online embodiment that explains how instructors and students are connected in synchronous networked environment via tele-operations. SVC creates a sense of place or a stage where online identities perform and highlights recent research on audio-visual signals in communication and team work (Lancaster University).

1st November 2pm (UK time)
 Prof. Matthew Morena presents Video for Calculus, exploring how video assignments align well with what recent studies have identified as effective homework practices (Christopher Newport University, USA). 

8th November 2pm (UK time)

Prof. Vanessa Dennen asks Who is my teacher? The visual development of online instructor identity and presence and examines how various instructor identity is communicated (or not) via their social presence in a course as well as online more generally, and the role that a wide variety of visual elements play in communicating identity (Florida State University, USA).

Access past webinars on Youtube:

After the webinar dates all talks can be viewed on the Visual Literacies YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSiogvcBVjDV_csGnm55Aw

• These seminars have already been presented and are available on the ViLi project YouTube channel:
• Prof. Avgoustos Tsinakos introduces ARTutor, an Augmented Reality educational platform which consists of a web-based authoring tool and a mobile application (Technological Educational Institute of Kavala, Greece).
• Prof. Lesley Farmer talks about Comics Art & Information Architecture, focusing on comic arts’ features for representing and structuring knowledge, noting visual literacy (California State University, USA). 
• Dr. Mark Childs talks about The Role of Identity and Appearance Online, in Virtual Worlds such as Second Life (Open University, UK).