Abstract

Instructional designers make use of visuals in the design of multimedia-based instruction. Literature pertaining to this area spans many different disciplinary boundaries, and as such, lacks much coherence. In order to organize and synthesize insights from the literature, a conceptual framework is needed, in particular one that pinpoints essential concepts from these disparate sources and contextualizes them within a perspective that is relevant and useful to instructional design practice. This thesis aims at developing such a framework based both on the literature and a brief case study, and presenting it as a means of analyzing the various levels of visual representational involved in instructional interface design.