e-Teaching empowered by knowledge visualization: ‘G. O. Easy’ courseware for instructional message designers

Learning technologies provides individual and cooperative learning opportunities for today´s education. Engaging and empowering learning experiences form the key path to ability to compete in the global economy for all e learners. How to scaffold pupils develop deep understanding within various content areas form the major tasks of educators in ICT classrooms. With the scaffolding function, visual image has made it convenient and efficient as an aid for learners of various domains. However, educators are seldom trained to make sound images. Graphic Organizers serve as visual thinking tools in taking advantage of technology to optimize learning. This paper presents a self-paced e-learning courseware entitled ´G.O. Easy´ with DOCS steps (Detect major concept, Organize knowledge structure, Choose a graphic organizer and Scratch the visual image) to construct graphic organizers of e-learning content. Ten formats of graphic organizers (arrow diagram, compare diagram, continuum, cycle diagram, fishbone diagram, flow chart, hierarchical diagram, matrix table, timeline diagram, tree chart) symbolize time-based, component-based and logic based relationships form the major content of this courseware. The message design principle, the instructional development process of this courseware as well as the user evaluation findings are presented in this presentation.