Image, Education, Science and Health (NUT010) is an undergraduate elective course dedicated to images and the imaginary in science and health education and science communication, with an emphasis on semiotics, visual culture and image analysis.
Workload: 60 hours
Instructor: Glaucio Aranha
Contact: glaucioaranha@ufrj.br
Course description
Images, communication, and science and health education. The image as a sign and the rhetoric of images. Multimodality. Still and moving images—photography, video, cinema, illustration and digital imagery—their history, production and roles in teaching and learning. Reading and analysing visual cultural products through an understanding of their languages. Images and the internet. Exercises in production, educational mediation and the critical use of educational and science communication materials.
Learning objectives
- Reflect on the status of images and their power to convey information.
- Understand how images fit within the symbolic universe: image, imaginary and semiosphere.
- Understand the perceptual and cognitive foundations of semiosis.
- Discuss the expressive power of images in science and health education.
Course content
- Image, information and communication.
- Visual systems and meaning-making.
- The image as a sign.
- Methods and techniques for image analysis.
- Still and moving images.
- Ways in which images are actualised.
Teaching approach
The course combines preparatory reading, classroom discussion and activities analysing images and visual cultural products. Individual course offerings may include seminars, analytical exercises and other activities specified in the relevant class programme.
Classes and syllabi
Dates, schedules, assessment methods, readings for each meeting and enrolment instructions are published in the pages for individual offerings. The linked page preserves the complete syllabus for the 2025.1 class (in Portuguese).