Effects of Visual Communication on Memory Enhancement of Thai Undergraduate Students, Kasetsart University

Memory is important in a learning process. The more students can memorize or retain information from a learning process, the greater possibility students can perform better in their learning. Therefore, this research aimed to explore visual communication in terms of its effectiveness and effects on memory enhancement with 19 Thai undergraduate students by using a communication skills online course with visual communication, an evaluation questionnaire of the selected course, an effectiveness questionnaire of visual communication, and a memory test on the selected course. Mean, standard deviation, content analysis and a t-test for dependent samples were used to analyze data collected from all research instruments. The research findings indicated that using visual communication produced positive results in enhancing student memory and thus generating greater student learning, which can be concluded that visual communication has high potential to be implemented in class as an effective tool for teaching courses to enhance student memory and thus create better learning performance.

There are many benefits of visual communication. According to Freeman (2019), visual communication can communicate information faster and better through its visual elements because it helps process visual information with less language barriers as compared to a paragraph of text, stimulates interest from viewers with their visual elements, generates easy to understanding information, and provides the ease of remembering and retaining the information (Choudhary, 2019;Dimension Data, 2013;Lankow, Ritchie & Crooks, 2012;Alfi, 2011). Also, there is various evidence from current research studies indicating that communication that has a visual component can be far more effective than communication that does not ((Hewlett-Packard Development Company, 2004).
In educational settings, learning success is the teacher's ability to communicate effectively with students in a learning process. Without good communication, teachers can make the learning process of students ineffective. When a teacher communicates ineffectively with students, their comprehension drops, and they eventually lose grasp of the subject matter (Mayhew, 2017). As a result, communication is important to successful teaching and learning. Therefore, visual communication can play an important role to support the teaching and learning process in a way that graphics and texts work together to communicate the instructional messages (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Due to its benefits, teachers can use visual communication to convey and deliver course content in order to generate interest, comprehension and retention through the variety of visual elements. Furthermore, adding visual elements to words can be a powerful way to help learners engage in active learning (Mayer, 2003) while offering positive learning outcomes on the part of the learners who find the content engaging and authentic (Reiser & Dempsey, 2007).
The study of visual communication can have important impact to education as it is explicit that visual communication has high potential for use in teaching and learning process. With visual communication, course content is communicated in a format that is easy to understand, stimulates interest and helps retain the content. As a result, memory of students can be enhanced and their learning performance can be increased.

Method
To evaluate the effectiveness of visual communication and examine its effects on memory enhancement of students, a quasi-experimental research design was implemented by developing the communication skills online course with visual communication from documentary review on theories and related researches in visual communication. The developed online course was then examined by 3 experts with an evaluation questionnaire and pilot tested by a group of 10 non-targeted samples, who studied the same course with an effectiveness questionnaire. After revising the course from expert comments and feedback of non-targeted samples on the use of visual communication, the researcher then used it for teaching over a period of 15 sessions with 19 targeted samples, who enrolled in the selected course. The researcher evaluated the effectiveness of visual communication with a questionnaire and examined the effects of visual communication on memory enhancement of students through their learning performance with pre-test and post-test results.

Participants
The researcher used the purposive sampling method to select only participants, who registered for the selected course implementing visual communication at Kasetsart University. Therefore, 19 Thai undergraduate students were selected to be participants in the study.

Instruments
The communication skills online course with visual communication was designed and developed to explore the effectiveness of visual communication and its effects on memory enhancement of students with three research instruments, that is, an evaluation questionnaire, an effectiveness questionnaire and a memory test. The details were as following.
The communication skills online course with visual communication was designed and developed from the literature review of visual communication and content of a regular communication skills course. 3 experts evaluated it with an evaluation questionnaire and the pilot test was done with a group of 10 non-target samples, who studied the same course.
An evaluation questionnaire based on three basic provisions of effective visual communication was utilized to obtain opinions from experts. It consisted of 9 items on a 5 Likert scale basis (1=very low to 5= very high) in three basic provisions, that is, appeal, comprehension and retention with an open-ended question at the end of the questionnaire. The results of scores and recommendations were reported and utilized to improve the course before its use.
An effectiveness questionnaire was utilized to obtain students' perceived effectiveness of the visual communication including feedback and comments. It was developed from the literature review of visual communication. It consisted of 20 items on a 5 Likert scale basis (1=very low to 5= very high) in three functions, that is, communicating content, enhancing memory, and increasing learning with an open-ended question at the end of the questionnaire for further recommendation. The index of item-objective congruence (IOC) ranged from 0.67-1.00 according to expert opinions while the values of reliability coefficient were established at 0.94 according to the pilot study with 10 non-target group of samples.
A memory test was developed from the course content using a pretest-posttest design to investigate the effects of visual communication on memory enhancement of students before and after the implementation of visual communication. The memory test consisted of 20 multiple choice questions, each with 4 possible answers but only one correct answer to investigate the understanding of the course content. Each correct answer was worth one score. The total scores ranged from 0 to 20 indicating the memory of the course content. The validity was verified by 3 experts with the index of item-objective congruence (IOC) ranging from 0.67-1.00. The pilot study was done with 10 non-target group of samples with the values of reliability coefficient at 0.83. The difficulty (P) and discrimination values (r) were analyzed and reported between 0.20-0.80 and 0.20-1.00, respectively.

Data Collection
The target group of students took the pre-test in the first session before the use of visual communication. After completing the pre-test, they studied the developed communication skills online course over a period of 15 sessions. At the end of semester, the post-test was distributed to investigate the visual communication's effects on memory enhancement of students and the effectiveness questionnaire to obtain student perceptions towards the effectiveness of visual communication including feedback and comments. Finally, the completeness and accuracy of all instruments were checked before proceeding to data analysis.

Data Analysis
Data obtained from an evaluation questionnaire, an effectiveness questionnaire, a memory test were analyzed. Quantitative data from opinions of experts and non-targeted group of samples on the applicability and the effectiveness of visual communication were used. A 5 Likert scale basis (from very low (1) to very high (5) scale) was utilized to evaluate the applicability of visual communication according to expert opinions and the perceived effectiveness of visual communication from student opinions. The t-test for dependent samples was used to determine if there was a significant difference between the means of students' memory before and after the use of visual communication or not. Qualitative data from open ended questions was reported to summarize recommendations from experts and feedback on visual communication from students. Statistics used for data analysis were mean, standard deviation, content analysis, and a t-test for dependent samples with the p-value set at statistical significance of .05 level.

Results and Discussion
The research findings were as follows

The Developed Communication Skills Online Course with Visual Communication
The communication skills online course with visual communication was developed from a regular communication skills course to add visual forms of visual communication such as animation, graphics, colors, videos, and typography in order to turn the existing content-based or text-based course to the visual-based one according to the literature review of visual communication. There were 11 videos created by the researcher for students studying online over a period of 15 sessions. Before using, they were reviewed by 3 experts in the field of education as appropriate ( =4.56, S.D.= 0.40) for use at very high level in its appeal, retention and comprehension, which were three basic provisions of effective visual communication.

The Effectiveness of Visual Communication according to Student Perceptions
The developed communication skills online course with visual communication was used to teach students online in 15 sessions. The researcher had dual roles of a researcher and an instructor to introduce visual communication at the first session, clarify the research purposes, and invite students to be participants in the research study. There were 11 videos related to the content taught in each session. All students attended the online class using visual communication. In the last session, an effectiveness questionnaire was distributed to students to measure the effectiveness of visual communication according to student perceptions. The perceived effectiveness of visual communication was demonstrated in Table 2.   Students thought that the course with visual communication drew their attention with graphics, colors, animations, videos, and typography better than texts while helping improve their memory retention and content comprehension. They also felt that they learnt better with visual communication when they used it to recall, retain, and retrieve the course content.

Effects of Visual Communication on Memory Enhancement
Students were given the pre-test before starting the course and post-test at the end of the course. A memory test was used to examine the effects of visual communication on memory enhancement before and after the implementation of visual communication. 3 experts verified the validity of the memory test with the index of item-objective congruence (IOC) with values more than 0.60 and the memory test was pilot tested with a group of 10 non-targeted samples with the value of reliability coefficient at 0.83. T-test for dependent samples was then used to compare the means between pre-test and post-test results and to examine whether there was a statistical difference between the means of two tests before and after implementing visual communication. Table 3 illustrated memory enhancement of students in the pre-test and post-test results. From Table 3, the pre-test scores were 15.05 (S.D. = 1.43). After the implementation of visual communication, the post-test scores increased to 19.47 (S.D. = 1.17). They were much higher than pre-test scores at statistical significance of .05 level. It meant that students had better memorization when using visual communication to generate appeal, comprehension and retention in the course, which led to memory enhancement and better learning performance.
The main findings indicated that the use of visual communication in the course was effective according to students' perceived effectiveness and increased memory enhancement, which led to better learning performance. The findings were in line with Levie & Lentz (1982) who reviewed 55 studies on the effects of text illustration as compared to text alone and found that they increased understanding in 98 percent of the experiments because pictures facilitate learning by providing clarifying examples, extra-lingual information, contexts for interpretation, and redundancy which aids recall. Hewlett-Packard Development Company (2004) also supported that the more visual content in a presentation, the more memorable the information will be over the long term and plenty of evidence from formal research studies indicated that communication that has a visual component can be far more effective than communication that does not. Therefore, incorporating visual elements into texts provided positive results in memory enhancement, which was in accordance with Vanichvasin (2013) who found that most students could recall content when incorporating visual elements such as infographics into the course content while Udomon et al. (2013) found that visual stimulation is more effective than audio stimuli at achieving higher memory retention and recall (with a p-value < .05). The findings can help instructors gain awareness of the relationship between visual communication and memory enhancement so that they can better integrate visual communication to help enhance memory of students and create better learning performance in the future. Therefore, using visual communication seemed necessary and found effective in enhancing student memory, as the research findings illustrated that there was significant difference in scores before and after the implementation of visual communication. The current study can provide better understanding of why visual communication can enrich communication in terms of activating attention, generating understanding and maintaining retention while providing guidelines of how to use visual communication as a useful teaching and learning tool in an educational context to enhance student memory and increase better learning performance.

Conclusion and Recommendation
In conclusion, visual communication produced positive results. It can be applied in courses in educational context to communicate course content more effectively with graphics, colors, animations, videos, typography or any other forms of visuals for better attention, comprehension and retention, enhance memory by helping students recall, retain, and retrieve course content, and motivate learning with interest and satisfaction for better memorization and learning performance. However, memory testing can be carried out again to confirm the findings as time may affect student memory. Also, the research on visual communication has been done in the communication skills course, which was not complex discipline. The next research may be conducted in other courses with more complex disciplines to confirm the findings and explore the differences in disciplines if any.