ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with approaches for helping learners to 'read' sophisticated visual displays that are normally difficult for the uninitiated to interpret. The context of the innovation described here is a multimedia-based training package for chemical process industries. The target audience for this package is trainees lacking background in the highly specialized form of pictorial representation used to portray process control systems on computer screens. Trainees need to be able to use these complex, abstract types of diagrammatic information as a tool for learning how to become process control operators. The approach in this innovation is based on (a) challenging prevailing notions about the role that pictorial information plays in learning and (b) questioning assumptions about the extent to which pictures can be expected to be self-explanatory. It was assumed that the package would need to develop trainees' domain-specific picturereading skills before they could use process control diagrams presented during training as effective resources for learning about process control itself. The
presentation strategies used took account of what trainees (who were novices in the content domain) would be likely to do when first faced with an unfamiliar, abstract pictorial representation. From that starting point, the strategies helped trainees to build up an interpretation of the depicted content using approaches designed to keep the cognitive processing load within reasonable bounds. Subsequent development of trainees' reading skills involved a 'considerate' exposition of the content using extensive aural and visual support to address learner needs typically not considered by subject matter experts.
