Article:Animations Need Narrations: An Experimental Test of a Dual-Coding Hypothesis
From unthinkMedia
This article describes two experiments that used college students with low-prior knowledge regarding mechanics. In these experiments the students where presented a dual-coded media containing a bicycle tire pump that included a verbal description given before or integrated into the animation.
Results show that it is much more helpful when both verbal and visual explanations are coordinate simultaneously.
The main difference between this and other similar experiment is that it swapped static imagery with animation, and also added problem solving as a measure, instead of only recall.
Contents |
Experiment Questions
"The practical challenge for instructional designers is to use the power of computer graphics in ways that can be theoretically and empirically justified."
- What constitutes an understandable explanation?
- How can educators help science-naive students to understand scientific explanations?
- How can computer-based animations be used to promote scientific understanding?
Experiment 1
This experiment consisted of viewing an animation of a bicycle tire pump with a narration give both before and during the animation.
Result
With both groups receiving identical visual and animated content, the simultaneous version of the presentation resulted in substantially better problem-solving performance that involved reasoning about how the pump works
Experiment
Experiment 2a
This experiment was done to replicate results of Experiment 1 on two dependent measures (problem solving and verbal recall).
Experiment 2b
compares four treatment groups:
- words w/ pictures
- words only
- pictures only
- control
on two dependent measures
- problem solving
- verbal recall
Result
performed better on the problem-solving test than students who saw the animation without words
Interesting Quotes
"However, Rieber (1990, p. 84) wisely warned instructional designers to "resist incorporating special effects, like animation, when no rationale exists." We contend that to effectively use advances in educational technology, developers need to understand the ways in which people learn from words and pictures.(Mandl & Levin, 1989; Willows & Houghton, 1987a, 1987b)."
"Our research provides a modest contribution to this collaborative effort by showing that animations—however powerful—are meaningless to students who cannot determine to what the elements and actions in the animations refer."
Reference
Mayer, R. E., & Anderson, R. B. (1991). Animations need narrations: An experimental test of a dual-coding hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 484-490.
