THE TOP 5 WAYS THAT
GRAPHIC DESIGN CAN
IMPROVE EDUCATION 

Ask any student or teacher how school and learning has changed as a result of COVID, and get ready for an ear full. Many will agree that all stakeholders did the best they could given the constant fluctuations of the last few years. Many have also expressed a sentiment that the pre-existing challenges of learners, families and educators who identify as Others were exacerbated by the global pandemic. So, now, what do we do?

As a Graphic Designer and Visual Arts Educator, in 2020 at the on-set of the pandemic I found myself working in a secondary classroom and engaged in a graduate level research project exploring the space where graphic design and education coexist. As schools transitioned to remote learning over night, my fellow teachers and I brainstormed new ways of keeping learning exciting and engaging with our new distance learning tool, Zoom. But, in the midst of the chaos, I also found a new relationship emerging with the families and students in my class. We were becoming partners in education. 

Parents, family members, educators and support staff all leaned in to help shepherd our students towards their self-paced grade level learning targets. Daily morning Zoom meetings with students were punctuated with weekly and monthly Zoom parent meetings, newsletters, and phone calls in an effort to keep all of our stakeholders engaged. Weekends were spent packaging up supplies and learning materials, combining them into individualized reusable plastic bins, one for each student. Mondays were spent driving around town, delivering the bins to the door steps of students. In reflecting on this fast-paced experience now, my hope is to share out five of our best practices that were informed by graphic design principles and educational research that worked well, in hopes that these resources may be useful to fellow educators, students, and families. 

#1 LEARNING TARGETS 

     Learning Targets are excellent tools for any teacher who wants to continue to build healthy partnerships with their students and their families. I first learned about Learning Targets through professional development provided by the Bureau of Indian Education, while working at Alamo Navajo Community School, through a consulting company called Expeditionary Learning. While our collective goal as educators at that point was to work alongside families and students to build and cultivate a school culture which worked best for one specific community, we also acknowledged that the parents and families of our students had experienced a cultural legacy of local Native Boarding Schools and the resulting loss of trust in education. As educators it was essential to reflect on how we were communicating our expectations for learning with those who were responsible for mastering the learning – the students. As well as reflecting on our own definitions of “success” and how that mindset fit within the community’s cultural lens of success. 
     So, what are Learning Targets? “Learning Targets are concrete goals written in student-friendly language that clearly describe what students will learn and be able to do by the end of a class, unit, project or course.” When we bring students into the conversation at the beginning of a lesson, and introduce the overview or project arc of a learning opportunity, we are inviting the learner to engage with us by providing them with a road map as we enter into a learning experience with specific goals in mind. 
     In my own practice, I have used Learning Targets as key elements to develop during the lesson-planning process, where I align the grade level standards of New Mexico’s Common Core Visual Arts Standards with Massachusetts same grade level Visual Arts Standards. The choice of pairing New Mexico and Massachusetts is the first step in working to raise NM from its current ranking of 51st in the nation for quality K-12 education in comparison with Massachusetts ranking as first, according to Forbes.   
     While this mindset of shared partnership in learning for educators is a huge shift from historical teacher-centered models of education, and may feel awkward to an older generation, I believe this is a necessary paradigm shift. In addition, the sharing of responsibility for learning and eventual demonstration of mastery with the learner can also empower the learner with a sense of agency. 
     In the classroom setting, I generally posted Learning Targets in large font size on an 8.5 x 11 in. paper, within a sheet protectors (so they could be easily switched out between classes). Ideally these learning targets are reviewed at the beginning of a class, if you are already into a unit, or if a student finds that they have gotten off-task a quick prompt such as “I wonder how you are working towards your Learning Target?” can help the student to self-regulate their behavior, or at least become more aware of their behavior. 

#2 GOAL SETTING: SHORT TERM & LONG TERM

     Our next deep dive into the academic research behind goal setting has illuminated evidence for including goal setting as one of the top five ways that graphic design can improve education in New Mexico. A 2021 article published in Computers in Behavior, which focused on the goal-setting practice as it relates to on-line learning in high learning institutions found that “While online learning environments offer learners a high level of flexibility to pursue education at any place and any time, it does not have the same spatial, temporal, or intellectual supports as typical on-campus learning environments… Researchers have argued that learners in online learning environments need to self-regulate their learning to a large extent in order to succeed.” The authors continue to discuss self-regulating learning as demonstrated by active participation in their own learning process by monitoring and controlling their motivation, metacognition, and behavior towards achieving their learning goals. The authors also identified goal setting, strategic planning, time-management, and effort regulation as positively influencing success in on-line learning environments. 
     While the pandemic has broadened the technological possibilities for distance learning for many, Others without stable internet access have not benefited in the same way from this pivot. In addition, given this shift in learning, it seems essential that we take a proactive role as educators to prepare students for a continued trend in on-line learning by incorporating goal-setting rituals and other strategies to help students develop self-regulating learning behaviors that will contribute to their success.   
     This goal setting tool also helped to clarify communication between students, teachers, and family members. During the COVID pandemic, I developed an abbreviated middle school-level appropriate goal setting notebook for short-term and long-term goals. This looked like grade-level color coded spiral bound notebooks with a laminated front cover and back cover, with each student’s name and grade level on the front. Each student received a goal setting notebook at the beginning of each semester during the pandemic, along with a corresponding long-term goal graph of specific subject area learning goals. 
     At the middle school level, beginning in the 5th grade, this goal setting practice looked like a morning ritual of setting three academic goals for the day. Given that the specific school used a self-paced learning model, this tool worked well when it was introduced in-person, and then strengthened during distance learning. This was also a way that parents and family members could quickly check-in with their child, as a daily assignment was to have a conversation with a parent or family member about their daily goals, evidenced by a parent/family signature at the bottom of their goal-setting page. At the end of the week, parents could either email photos of their student’s goal-setting pages or students could upload these photos to our online course.      
     While my class had become familiar with this ritual of goal setting prior to the pandemic, it felt more like a transition in terms of helping families engage in this practice. The parent or family member’s daily responsibility with this tool was to have an engaging conversation with their student about the short term goals and how those goals would help them to meet their long term goals. If the student’s short-term goals were SMART, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely, for the day, the family member would sign off on the goals and encourage their child to get started and stay focused. Then, at the end of the academic school day, the student’s responsibility was to check-in with their family member on their progress towards those three specific goals.
    For middle school students, this was a great learning opportunity to discuss tangible rewards and consequences for self-regulated learning. To be clear, I did not expect our middle school students to achieve every goal every day, and do not believe that this should be an expectation. This is a learning tool. Mistakes are to be made and discussed as the students engage with this tool, and it should be tailored along the way. As many middle school students do occasionally get off task, reflecting on that choice at the end of the day, the reasons for the choice, and the consequences, helped students to comprehend beginning stages of time management and self-regulated learning. The reflection space at the bottom of the page also helped students to plan steps needed to achieve the goal or overcome challenges encountered during the day. 
     This goal setting tool is one graphic design solution to apply research findings to create one possible solution to support students in building the skills to become self-regulating learners as our learning environment continues to engage with online learning. The research backs this up, as the same article states “Research findings in [online learning] suggest that providing support for learners to set their personal goals may increase self-regulated learning… Having clear goals can help learners to initiate, orientate, and sustain SRL processes such as planning, monitoring and reflecting.” The goal setting process “influences students’ learning processes in four ways: 1) selecting and executing goal-relevant tasks, 2) stimulating one to exert a higher level of effort, 3) sustaining one’s persistence over time, and 4) indirectly enhancing learning through heightened arousal.” 
     *If you are interested in purchasing the goal setting pdf for your classroom or personal use, check out our Hannah’s Bananas Shop! Here you can purchase and download a printable pdf form that you can either fill out digitally as a web form, get it printed and spiral bound at your local copy shop, or order a spiral bound notebook to be shipped to you. Additional costs may apply for shipping and handling. 

#3 SOCRATIC SEMINAR 

#5 LESSON PLANNING 

     There are so many areas of the academic school day, individual class periods, and individual student needs that can sometimes feel unpredictable. I’ve found that focusing on what we can control and applying exponential improvement based on experience, discussions with colleagues, and applied research can help us pivot with grace, when required.
     Continuing with our theme of an emerging partnership between educators and learners, I propose that the best practice for our current times mandates a scaffolded approach to lesson planning. While this level of planning is a huge time investment, it becomes exponentially stronger when we as educators reflect on what worked and what didn’t, when we reflect on the success and failure of specific units, and own the role of designing engaging learning experiences. Another essential part of lesson planning today, is sharing the load: in which the learner also has an Assignment Checklist or Assignment Log. In my experience, giving specific assignments numbers, such as “Assignment Number 1: Introduction to Graphic Design” can help to chunk the larger learning arc into bite-sized tasks that feel achievable to many students. However, this Assignment Log can only be delivered to the learner once the longer term lesson planning has been completed. 

SEMESTER OVERVIEW LESSON PLANS
     If you are currently teaching, you probably have an established method that works well for you. In my first teaching position after graduating from college, I was blessed with a demanding principal who ran a tight ship with very high standards of professionalism. This Semester Overview was one of the first pieces she required from all of our new teachers. This level of lesson planning also became helpful for making a pitch for a new class or course that could be offered, with enough transparency to inform our administrators, but not overwhelm with minutiae.  
     In the semester overview, we presented a “bird’s eye” view of the middle school and high school classes we were facilitating. If it was a nine-week semester, we would have a block for each week with specific standards and project titles, as well as major supplies required for success.  While it would start out as a skeleton framework, I found that this framework allowed me to build up the learning experience intentionally, based on these core elements.           

UNIT LESSON PLANS

WEEKLY LESSON PLANS

ASSIGNMENT LOG  

LEARNER 

Works Cited
1) Expeditionary Learning. “Learning Targets.” 
https://eleducation.org/resources/chapter-1-learning-targets#:~:text=Learning%20targets%20are%20concrete%20goals,project%2C%20or%20even%20a%20course.

2) “FORBES ranks New Mexico public school system as 51st.” <https://errorsofenchantment.com/forbes-ranks-new-mexico-public-school-system-51st/&gt; November 5, 2021.

3) Wong, Jacqueline, et. al. “Facilitating goal setting and planning to enhance online self-regulation of learning.” Computers in Behavior. Vol. 124. 2021. <https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0747563221002363?token=DD7A04A9D0C3E02FC0573B9DD0B6748C370554E6F47454C60E65C18167E355B0D1945CC323DAC4AEAD219D35F3D19ED1&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20221215173449&gt;

4) Castellano-Reyes, Daniela. “Socratic Seminar.” The Students’ Guide to Learning Design and Research. Brigham Young University. <open.byu.edu/studentguide/socratic_seminar>

5) University of Cincinnati. “The Cornell Method for Note-Taking.” https://www.uc.edu/campus-life/learning-commons/learning-resources/notetaking-resources/cornell-method-notes.html#:~:text=The%20Cornell%20Method%20was%20created,way%20for%20each%20day’s%20class.

6) Wilensky, Joe. “Take Note: Popular Study Method has ‘Cornell’ Written All Over It.” July 29, 2022. https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/cornell-notes/&nbsp;