Nicole O. Jackson IDT 560 Research paper
What animated illustrations conditions can improve technical document comprehension in young students? Format, signaling and control of the presentation. The article I reviewed focuses on the effect of how illustrations can affect the mental model through animated vs. static signaling cues and learner-controlled visuals. The experiment deals with control of spatial and verbal working memory through reading performance. The student in the test did not know much about they were learning. The lesson they were tested on was the way mechanical metal cogs worked. In this article, research done by Betrancort & Tversky experimented with the effect of animated illustrations in technical education. The results from an earlier experiment showed that static illustrations and animations have showed improvement in comprehension in the classroom, tested by younger learners, middle school grades seventh and eighth. As the earlier research was broken down, the animated version (included visuals, text, and sound) showed all the steps in a process broken down into micro-steps, showing each concept and key points while the static version only displayed the steps. They found that the extra information helped the learners with little prior knowledge more since they saw how the operations worked for the first time and were able to retain the information into mental mode. The new study conducted by Betrancort & Tversky was to test the effects of the animations and see how the effect of signaling cues can increase learner understanding in both static and animated visuals and find out which one is more effective. The experiment was in four phases, evaluate prior knowledge by overseeing a pretest, and then teach the activity to the students. After that test the students based on what they learned from the visuals (static vs. animated) and finally, give a post test on what they learned after a week-long lesson. The results showed that the students showed immediate comprehension to the testing. The students learned more from the use animated visual than the static images along. The visual clues had more of a controlled instructional format than the animated ones what was shown to students who had the least prior knowledge with the static images. The benefit of using the animations other than using the static imagery alone improved student learning, especially with the aid of visual cues such as text or visual indicators like arrows or sound cues will help the learner see what is important.
After reading the article, I like the option of having both static and animations help me understand how things work than the use of text alone. I have found that as a student, I prefer an example with some cues showing us how things work than having the option of figuring out lesson materials ourselves then learning that we have studied the wrong material.
Reference:
Boucheix, J., & Guignard, H. (2005). What animated illustrations conditions can improve technical document comprehension in young students? Format, signaling and control of the presentation. European Journal of Psychology of Education-EJOE (Instructo Superior De Psicologia Aplicada), 20(4), 369-388.