Abstract:

Visualisation, visual communication has getting more and more important role in the 21th century, even so university courses do not pay enough attention on this essential field. This paper deals with a web based course that is purposed to help the students making attractive documents and presentations: it presents layouts and shows how to evaluate them, which is the (bad) common working habit, which are the new trends in the visual design etc.

Word processing is a frequently used activities performed by computer users. Courses on IT skills contain mainly technical information on word processors such as how to make a word e.g. in italics or how to justify paragraphs, but there are only few curricula that emphasize the importance of layout, the related typographical or visual issues. Another problem is that the default settings of the respective soft wares produce strange layouts because the localized distributions of these programs do not cover the localizations of layouts.

Teaching visualization and word processing with the main recommendations of typography and the basics of visual design for students – whose specializations are mathematics, computer science, library information science, physics, foreign languages, philosophy – shows that, in general, their knowledge is on a minimal level concerning layouts as well as capabilities of the applied programs.

The author teaches these fields since 1990, and the experience is that the level of knowledge of general students has not been changed during this long time period. It is the time to change the aims of teaching word processing and making presentation. In our paper we present a new method and a web based course for teaching the basics of visual communication and design for general students. This method and curriculum fits better to the needs of modern students and graduated employees in the 21th century.

Keywords:

Teaching visual communication, web based course, curriculum, teaching typography, word processing, undergraduate.