Multi-dimensional support for development of visual literacy in engineering education

Visual literacy is becoming increasingly important in the digitalized economy, as it determines the ability to perform and communicate effectively. The need to close skills gap and provide engineers and engineering educators with practical, transferable skills based around visual literacy is a topic attracting growing interest at national and international levels. Numbers of reports lead to the conclusion, that not only a deep understanding of visual competences needs among people at technical education is required, but also mechanism of transferring them into ‘teachable’ innovative pedagogical strategies within traditional engineering courses, and mandating curricular improvements among stakeholders involved in education process. Thus, the article presents a case study that describes deeply an example of the initiative aimed at multi-dimensional support for development of visual literacy framework in engineering education. The VLEE initiative, undertaken by 6 organizations recruited in 5 European countries, was carefully designed to address studying and developing visual literacy simultaneously in various areas and formats, hence generating impact in numerous fields. The paper addresses the questions referring to measuring and developing visual literacy and to assess short-term and long-term initiatives aimed at achieving the desired development impact. The achieved results enriched the existing knowledge through proposing the complex approach to organize the appropriate visual literacy oriented education as a spectrum of interconnected analytical and action-focus activities required to be taken to achieve the proper impact on target group. The practical application of proposed approach in VLEE project was presented by indicating the role of related outputs in a process of developing the short and long-term impact strategy.