IDENTIFIERS *Visual Design

The way information is visually designed and synthesized greatly affects how people understand and use that information. Increased use of the World Wide Web as a teaching tool makes it imperative to question how visual/verbal information presented via the Web can increase or restrict understanding. The purpose of this study was to examine students ' perceptions of the effectiveness of visuals in conveying the instructional message in an educational Web course. Participants were 15 seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old students. The students were asked about the design of the pages using one of the top Web course sites for children. Questions focused on information/instructional purposes, graphic/picture elements, text/lettering elements, color, layout, and texturing. Results indicated the following: (1) none of the students understood that all the sites dealt with child safety; (2) the majority of the students understood the concept of the sites as they read the information being presented, and at this point, did not use th