Chapter 6: Active Images: Teaching Students Critical Thinking and Analysis Skills with Picture Postcards

This chapter will show faculty the benefits of using picture postcards in different disciplines for encouraging critical thinking, analysis, and visual literacy in the active learning classroom while helping students to contextualize what they are learning in the course. It will provide strategies for how to teach this material including possible sample worksheet questions that could be used in multiple disciplines. This chapter will present one way that faculty can innovatively use active learning strategies to teach students archival skills, analytical thinking, visual literacy, cultural competency, historical and locational awareness, collaboration with other students, and disciplinary content. Furthermore, it will discuss how this activity is equally well-suited for both innovative active and experimental classroom setups as well as large lecture halls and traditional classroom setups and how modifications can be made for each environment.