Abstracts - Earli

KN2 230 August 2007 12:30 - 13:30Room: HarmóniaInvited PaperLearning with animations: lessons from static graphicsRichard Lowe, Curtin University of Technology, AustraliaChair:Andrea Kárpáti, ELTE University Faculty of Science, HungaryAnimations increasingly feature in technology-based learning materials. However, the basis uponwhich much educational animation is designed and used by practitioners tends to be intuitiverather than principled. Consequently, the educational effectiveness of the animations included inthese learning materials is uncertain. This presentation explores recent theoretical developmentsand empirical findings having implications for the design and use of educational animations. Itsparticular focus is the potential of animations to facilitate comprehension of complex, specialiseddynamic subject matter. To date, most research on learning with animations has dealt withrelatively simple and familiar subject matter. It has produced a number of principles that areapplicable to more straightforward types of animations. However, those principles are notnecessarily sufficient for animations that impose greater information processing demands onlearners. Dynamic depictions of complex subject matter are especially challenging for learnerslacking background knowledge in the depicted domain. Both visuospatial and dynamiccharacteristics of an animated display can contribute to the complexity responsible for thechallenges such learners face. In order to make this high-demand situation tractable, learners mustbe selective about which aspects of the display receive their attention. Lacking support for topdownprocessing of the animation, low domain knowledge learners tend to be more reliant onbottom-up approaches when extracting information from this type of display. As a result, theirextraction may favour information that is perceptually salient but not necessarily highly relevant tothe learning task. Under these circumstances, manipulation of the way information is presented hasthe potential to make its relevant aspects more accessible. For hundreds of years, approaches thatreduce visuospatial realism have been used to make static graphics more educationally effective.With the ascendancy of animations in education, it is appropriate to investigate the use of parallelapproaches with dynamic graphics that reduce behavioural realism.– 471 –