Do instructional animations help or hinder learning?

Animations for learning can be attractive and compelling. However, research repeatedly shows that the effectiveness of instructional animations is often limited compared to learning from static graphics.

However, a newer look at previous studies suggests that animation may enhance learning depending on the learning goal.

Defining Animation

Animation creates the illusion of motion as objects change over time and in space. Color changes over time are also an attribute of the animation format.

What’s the problem?

The advantages of an animation format over static images is that it can:

• Illustrate dynamic concepts that may be difficult to visualize in other media.
• Show changes that are not visible to the naked eye (stars exploding, cells dividing).
• Speed-up transformations that naturally happen very slowly.

Despite these advantages, three meta-analyses comparing animation to static images demonstrated only small improvements in learning and retention when compared to static images. The three meta-analyses refer to Berney & Bétrancourt (2016), Castro-Alonso et al. (2019), and Höffler and Leutner (2007).

High Cognitive Load

One particular feature of animation creates excessive demands on viewers: the transient nature of the information as it plays. Dynamic media often imposes a higher cognitive load than static images (Hegarty, 2004). According to educational researchers, when information is displayed briefly, learners must hold it in working memory to integrate it into a coherent mental model. Since working memory is limited in size and duration, the information may vanish before learning occurs.

Instructional animations often fail to manage the cognitive load required to accomplish a learning task. (See intrinsic processing for more on this.)

Yue et al. (2013) analyzed 430 publicly available medical animations. They found that only about half of these animations followed the core recommendations of Mayer’s multimedia design principles. For example:

• Many animations failed to present essential definitions before the start of training.
• Rather than using narration, the animations included on-screen text.
• Many animations contained extraneous material and redundant on-screen text.
• There was little use of signaling and visual cues to guide the eye.
• Most animations did not provide controls for the learner.

When Animation Does Assist Learning

So, has the evidence on learning from animation been incorrect? According to Ploetzner et al. (2020), previous research may have measured the wrong type of animation. The purpose of most instructional animations is to achieve conceptual learning goals. This is not a strength of animation.

Instead, the Ploetzner researchers focused on animations with a kinematic learning goal. Kinematics refers to changes in the complex movement of objects in space and time. Kinematic models are fundamental to understanding things like how the components in an automated factory move and interact over time or how the musculoskeletal system works as a person performs a physical task.

The researchers suspected that animations are more effective than static graphics when the animation displayed changes relevant to learning, especially when the changes were complex. Their hypothesis was confirmed when they reanalyzed the meta-analysis of Berney and Bétrancourt (2016).

They conclude that when the learning goal is to acquire a kinematic mental model, the animation format can be more effective than static graphics. “Learning from animations is considerably more effective than learning from static pictures if the specifics of the displayed changes need to be learned” (Ploetzner et al., 2021).

Further Validation

To validate their re-analysis, they ran another study with 88 university students (Ploetzner et al., 2021). This experiment compared how well the students could identify specific motions and spatial arrangements in a gear mechanism.

Members of three groups learned about the gear mechanism from either an animation, viewing four explanatory pictures, or examining one picture. For identifying the motion of the gears, the animation group performed significantly better than the other groups. This suggests animations are better for learning the specifics of changes in space over time because viewers can directly perceive the changes rather than infer them.

Interestingly, subjects who viewed the single picture showed the best performance for identifying the spatial arrangements of the gears. This suggests that static images may be better for learning spatial information.

An Aside: Who Needs to Acquire Kinematic Models?

Many occupations must understand kinematic models to carry out their work. Here are some examples:

• Factory Operations: People in operations, maintenance, and automation may need to acquire kinematic mental models to manage and troubleshoot machinery and robotic systems.
• Vehicle Design and Repair: Automobile engineers and repair personnel need to understand how components are affected by the car’s engine power, mass, and resistance forces like friction and air drag.
• Biomechanics: Kinematic mental models help physical therapists, orthopedists, and sports medicine specialists understand the motion of bones, joints, and muscles.
• Designing Simulations: Programmers use kinematic models to simulate real-world engineering, physics, and biology phenomena accurately.

Conclusion

One conclusion now seems obvious: match the visualization to the learning objective. The studies reviewed here suggest that the limited effectiveness of many animations in learning occurs because their goal is unrelated to teaching perceptual and dynamic information.

However, when animations focus on a learning objective involving spatial or temporal information changes, the animated format can enhance learning.

References: 

1. Berney, S., & Bétrancourt, M. (2016). Does animation enhance learning? A meta-analysis. Computers & Education, 101: 150-167.
2. Castro-Alonso, J. C., Wong, M., Adesope, O. O., Ayres, P., & Paas, F. (2019). Gender imbalance in instructional dynamic versus static visualizations: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 31(2), 361–387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09469-1
3. Hegarty, M. Dynamic visualizations and learning: getting to the difficult questions. (2004). Learning and Instruction: 14: 3, 343-351.
4. Höffler and Leutner (2007)
5. Moreland, J.L., Dansereau, D.F., & Chmielewski, T.L. (2004). Recall of descriptive information: The effects of presentation modality and annotation quality. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 29(1), 61–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2003.09.001
6. Ploetzner, R., & Lowe, R. (2012). A systematic characterisation of expository animations. Computers in Human Behavior,28, 781–794.
7. Ploetzner, R, Berney, S, Bétrancourt, M. (2020). A review of learning demands in instructional animations: The educational effectiveness of animations unfolds if the features of change need to be learned. J Comput Assist Learn: 36: 838–860. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12476
8. Ploetzner, R., Berney, S., & Bétrancourt, M. (2021). When learning from animations is more successful than learning from static pictures: Learning the specifics of change. Instructional Science, 49(4), 497-514. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-021-09541-w
9. Yue, C., Kim, J., Ogawa, R., Stark, E. and Kim, S. (2013), Applying the cognitive theory of multimedia learning: an analysis of medical animations. Medical Education, 47: 375-387. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12090