Animation in education

During my first job as a reporter in a Singapore newspaper several, and I mean several, years ago, I attended a training programme to learn the conventions of newspaper writing and how to increase my productivity by writing against very tight deadlines. I still remember the horror I felt when we were given huge antique-looking typewriters to produce our articles. Everything in that mechanical junk conspired to work against my race with time. The keys had to be deeply and firmly pressed to get a print out and worse, my edit button was a bulky rubber eraser. Thankfully, our real workspace was equipped with computers and customised software configured for the fast production of our articles for the 4 am production of the daily newspaper.

My point is, technology was in my time all about speed, volume and productivity. Not that it isn’t that way today, but we’re better now at using it to do some beautiful things for us like create and entertain and learn and play. For my blogs, I am going to spend some time researching and grasping the beauty of a feature of technology that I can use to make teaching and learning a more dynamic process. I will start with the role of animation in adult learning. The animated video by Robinson (2010) on what’s wrong with our current education, speaks for itself.

While educational animation has all the indications that the content will engage, motivate and educate the reader better than, say, static images would, Lowe and Schnotz (2008) argue that research on the inherent effectiveness of animation in learning is not conclusive. They suggest that animated materials can only be successful if the design employs principles that govern how learners develop understanding when they work with animation. For this reason Lowe and Schnotz (2008) have published a book with lessons for an improved way to design educational animations for a range of contexts. The first section in the book titled Information Search and Processing shows how to create tasks from animation. The second section on Individual Differences and Strategies, discusses how animation influences learning. The third section on Interactivity and Learning illustrates the potential benefits of using advanced technology for interactive learning, and the fourth section titled Instructional Issues draws on several research sources for the best strategies on the use of animation in learning.

Wohl, Christie, Matheson and Anisman, (2010) present an example of how an educational animation was successfully used in a gambling intervention survey. The nine-minute presentation began with a conveyor-belt metaphor to illustrate that persistence in slot-machine gambling would not bring a player closer to a win. Instead, a bag of marbles metaphor showed that slot machines operated on the principle of sampling with replacement where the original odds are reset with each play. Then a cylinder metaphor was used to show the actual odds of winning on a slot machine as 90,000 to 1. The presentation concluded with a message listing seven low-risk practices on how to stay within expenditure limits when gambling. In the feedback, respondents who watched the animation said they understood the concept of sampling with replacement by not endorsing the conveyor belt metaphor. I think this is testimony of what Lowe and Schnotz (2008) were trying say about how animated material is more successful if it employs the principles of learning.

References
Wohl, M., Christie, K., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Can animation-based education correct erroneous cognitions and reduce the frequency of exceeding limits among slots players? Retrieved from the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre website 2490_Wohl Research Summary FINAL.pdf

Robinson, K. (2010). RSA animate: Changing education paradigms. Retrieved from the Extreme Presentation ™ method website http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/sir-ken-robinson-on-education-animated.html

Lowe, R. & Schnotz, W. (Eds). (2008). Learning with animation: Research implications for design.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York.