HYTP1080 Visual Communication as a Way to Improve Working Life Skills (2–3 cr)

On completion of the course students will:

• gain basic knowledge about the role of visual communication in today’s society,
• improve their competency in visual literacy, that is, visual reading, writing and thinking skills,
• learn to create and use images ethically,
• develop skills in visual interpretation.

Target group:

Bachelor and Exchange students

Course description:

The nature of today’s communication is overwhelmingly visual. Our communication practices are mediated visually, including photo and video creation and sharing, video chatting, and the visual language of emoticons, GIFs, and emojis. The everyday choices we make are based on what we see. Thus, also the way we present ourselves or communicate visually should be carefully considered, particularly in a working life context.

The skills you develop in this course will help you become strong visual communicator and a powerful and intelligent visual consumer. Visual learning occurs via experience rather than solely through knowledge acquisition. Thus, this course is designed in a format of ongoing visual activities and collabo-rative feedback sessions, along with more theoretical introduction to visual culture studies, visual liter-acy, image interpretation, presentation of visuals and elements of visual ethics.

Mode of study:

The course will consist of lectures, group work and exercises during class, workshops and a personal project (for 3 ECTS).

Assessment:

Active participation and homework (for 2 ECTS) plus individual project (for 3 ECTS). The course is evaluated with a grading scale from 0 to 5 (0=fail, 5=excellent).