Don’t Duel, Dual: Increasing Learning through Dual Coding
A surprise visual, busy PowerPoint slides, cluttered classroom posters: each of these presentation tactics can get students’ attention, with mixed results. With so many dueling information sources, attention is easy to grab, but hard to hold. Even for single sources of content, such as lecture slides or an info-heavy textbook, the way the content is presented can make it difficult for students to engage with and retain what they learn.
Enter dual coding, an evidence-based teaching practice rooted in Allan Paivio’s dual coding theory. This practice encourages teachers — and students — to systematically and visually approach new information through combinations of verbal and nonverbal elements, chunked into so-called “logogens” and “imagens.” At its simplest level, this means pairing text and graphics in lesson slides, notes and posters.
By using visual best practices and organizing the flow of content, teachers can help students learn complex things with less difficulty. Those same principles can be applied to students’ self-study, allowing for richer metacognition. Connecting cognitive science to study practices results in richer learning experiences.
What Is Dual Coding?
Essentially, dual coding theory suggests that verbal elements are processed in one way, while graphics are processed in another. Because these pathways are accessed concurrently, teachers can take advantage of the two channels to (a) lessen the cognitive load bearing down on students’ working memory; and (b) tie the two processed channels together while encoding them into long-term memory, resulting in a “dual coding” effect.
Beyond just having the two channels, the content itself is processed differently depending on whether it is verbal or nonverbal. Verbal information, such as text, is processed bit by bit. The linear flow of information means that students will read or hear words, waiting until the first part is processed to move on to the next chunk. In contrast, nonverbal elements — graphics — are processed asynchronously. Nonlinear graphics aren’t a problem, as the brain views them holistically.
Benefits of Dual Coding
As research suggests, dual coding allows learners to access and encode new information in a way that better allows them to remember and later access what they’ve learned. Dual coding can be a good way to make complex ideas more manageable. It also allows teachers to create a classroom vocabulary that students and teachers can use to build metaphors for big concepts later on.
Dual coding, with its similarities to sketchnoting, has the benefit of being fun to create and nice to look at. While it’s not necessarily an easy task to break down a big idea into the visual language of dual coding, the end result enriches both for its process-oriented learning value as well as its accessibility. Care needs to be taken to avoid competing visuals, such as using too many fonts. Doing so may divide the nonverbal information into too many discrete parts.
One book on dual coding, Dual Coding with Teachers by Oliver Caviglioli, features a section outlining the benefits of using visual communication in the classroom. The list, taken from research from Graphics for Learning, includes the following benefits:
- Directing students’ attention
- Triggering prior knowledge
- Managing cognitive load
- Building schema
- Transferring to working memory
- Motivation
Classroom Examples
Dual coding can be done by both students and teachers. Teachers can keep dual coding in mind as they prepare their lessons. For example, PowerPoint slides can be designed to pair graphics and text in ways that enhance, rather than detract, from meaning. Likewise, graphic organizers can be provided to students to facilitate their learning in a targeted visual way.
In addition to graphic organizers, which can be created by students freehand and include such organizer types as concept mapping, flow charts and more, students can also create physical and digital models of concepts and ideas. By creating their own visual metaphors of what they learn, they can use their personal connections in note-taking as a sort of shorthand — useful for scaffolding.
Dual Coding and Computational Thinking
While dual coding mostly connects to ideas of memory storage and processing, it also ties into computational thinking in subtle ways. For example, through the creation of dual coding materials, metacognitive thought runs in the background. Figuring out how to break down ideas into visuals that you — or your students — understand requires self-reflection into what visual language works best.
Dual coding also relates to decomposition, with how it seeks to remove needless complexity through concrete visual cues. By breaking down larger ideas and reassembling the information in a graphic, more visual way, students can better understand the processes involved with not only decomposition, but abstraction as well.
Dual coding isn’t problem-solving. Even so, using dual coding as a delivery system for information requires computational thought, and having the two functions overlap — both with the preparation and creation of content as well as using it to learn — doubles the potential benefits of using dual coding as a means of teaching and learning.
Ways to Integrate Dual Coding into the Classroom
There are a few ways to begin integrating dual coding into your classroom. For example, having students create sketchnotes of lessons gives their notes visual impact. While it’s possible to go overboard with colored pens or decorative flourishes, the act of note-taking using a visual shorthand dovetails nicely into dual coding’s core idea of information being presented both verbally and nonverbally.
You can also rework your lesson slides to approach concepts from a more deconstructed angle. As mentioned, dual coding pairs well with decomposition in that it takes ideas and pares them down to a visual, clearly delineated form. The Love to Teach blog shares examples of dual coding in the classroom in this post, showcasing history timelines and social media–inspired note-taking. This post on the Learning Scientists blog shares five dual coding blog posts, some of which demonstrate how visuals can be used in lesson prep.
Finally, graphic organizers are another way of using dual coding. By focusing on the graphics, the burden of working memory is mitigated. Worksheets with prefilled content can be helpful for guiding students’ explorations of a topic early on.
Further Resources
Oliver Caviglioli, a former headteacher, is a big proponent of dual coding. His book Dual Coding with Teachers, which was mentioned earlier, shares various facets of the practice through the eyes of educators across the globe. His book is especially useful in that it features a chapter of teacher profiles, each with explanations and examples of how they use dual coding in their own classrooms.
In addition to the blogs above and Caviglioli’s site, look at the #dualcoding tag on Twitter. Teachers share their visual resources regularly, and the ideas and layouts can help to inspire your own teaching and learning practices.
About the blogger:
Jesika Brooks
Jesika Brooks is an editor and bookworm with a Master of Library and Information Science degree. She works in the field of higher education as an educational technology librarian, assisting with everything from setting up Learning Management Systems to teaching students how to use edtech tools. A lifelong learner herself, she has always been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology. She edits the Tech-Based Teaching blog (and always wants to hear from new voices!).
