How a High School District is Using Infographics to Communicate With Stakeholders

Change can be a scary thing. Just ask the millions of teachers who are struggling to keep up with the technological changes revolutionizing classrooms across the country.

But Jamie Dyra is not one of these people. She is part of a new generation of educators who are at the forefront of the latest ed-tech trends and are committed to inspiring innovative thinking in both young students and their teachers.

As the chief information officer and professional learning coordinator for Merced Union High School District (MUHSD) in California, she maintains an e-learning platform where staff members can learn how to use a variety of online tools to facilitate collaboration, increase productivity and improve teaching.

"Obsessed with finding creative solutions," Jamie found herself one day looking for an online tool that would allow her to communicate more effectively with stakeholders. She came across Visme and was pleased with the way it allowed staff members to quickly translate dense material—such as syllabi and budget plans—into easy-to-process visuals and collaborate on projects such as infographics and presentations.

We had a chance to speak with Jamie about her experience with Visme, and this is what she had to say in her own words:

Tell us a bit about your role at MUHSD.

I am the Chief Information Officer and Professional Learning Coordinator for Merced Union High School District. MUHSD has made many innovative changes in the last two years, and we strive to continue to grow in order to live our mission that every staff member, every day, will support all students to acquire the skills necessary to develop and follow their postsecondary dreams.

How is your organization using Visme?

We have a team plan with Visme (10 licenses) which we use to create infographics and presentations to visualize our district focus areas, Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), course syllabi and other text-based resources that are not as easy to process and engaging as visual content. In particular, we use Visme to share the MUHSD story with all of our stakeholders.

MUHSD uses Visme to translate teacher training materials into infographics

Why did you choose Visme over other tools?

We found Visme through Google search and also compared it to Piktochart. We found our user experience with Visme to be smoother and more user friendly. Also, the wide variety of templates were a plus—Visme’s templates are more professional-looking and less cartoon-ish.

Visme offers hundreds of infographic templates across a variety of categories and styles

What projects did you create with Visme?

We translated syllabi into interactive infographics to detail exactly what is expected of the instructor. They include videos, links and interactive charts. We recently started using Visme to create visualized monthly Board Meeting briefs to assist in our communication plan for the district.

MUHSD uses Visme to create interactive infographics and visual board meeting briefs

Our site librarians create flyers for programs such as the district-wide Battle of the Books. Finally, we also create course materials for our Professional Learning platform, InnovatED.

Librarians at MUHSD use Visme to create flyers for programs

What results have you seen from using Visme?

Visme has saved me a ton of time. I’m not a designer by trade, so before I found Visme, I would spend 3 or 4 days creating something in Adobe Illustrator, teaching myself via YouTube as I went along -- now I only spend an hour in Visme.

Other colleagues have told me they create flyers and visual content from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, and I’ve told them how much easier it is to use a tool like Visme.

What Visme feature do you like the most?

I appreciate the wide variety of templates and themes available within Visme. Overall, I find the tool to be user friendly and the projects created are of high quality and crisp.

MUHSD uses Visme to communicate goals and accomplishments in a visual format

Would you recommend Visme to others?

Absolutely. Visme offers users easy-to-use tools to help with data visualization and branding. Research tells us that we process visuals far quicker than the written word so the opportunity to quickly get content to stakeholders is invaluable.

Visme is a tool that can be useful for students, teachers, administrators, and businesses alike. Visme focuses on usability which allows the end user to focus on their content.

Your Turn

Looking for an easy-to-use design collaboration tool that will boost your communication strategies with visual content? Take Visme for a test drive and let us know what you think below!