Making instructional animations more effective: a cognitive load approach

By Paul Ayres, Fred Paas. 2007

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This themed issue consists of seven empirical papers, as well as an introduction and discussion, and has its genesis in three symposia, organised by the authors of this article and presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in San Francisco, California. The papers investigate a number of conditions under which instructional animations may be effective. This article uses cognitive load theory (CLT) to provide an explanation for why animated instructions have not currently produced the learning benefits expected. A brief overview of the papers with a focus on how they accommodate critical aspects of cognitive load is given. The issue finishes with a discussion on each paper and identifies some common principles and recommendations for instructional design and research into animations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08904f702338118f5b22d208287eb7129c74e85b

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Mirror Neuron System and Observational Learning: Implications for the Effectiveness of Dynamic Visualizations (2009, methodology): “…it has also been argued that the transient nature of dynamic visualizations challenges the assumption that the mental inferences of movement or change required by static visualizations are more effort demanding than perceiving this change as dynamic visualizations (see e.g., Ayres & Paas, 2007b).”
Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: an Embodied Perspective (2011, background): “According to Ayres and Paas (2007), one of the reasons that animations are not so effective is because they are transient by nature and learners are thus required to select and process new information while simultaneously remembering and integrating previously presented information.”
Cognitive Load Theory: Advances in Research on Worked Examples, Animations, and Cognitive Load Measurement (2010, background): “Information may be missed completely if it is not attended to at the right moment, and needs to be kept in mind while simultaneously processing new incoming information (Ayres and Paas 2007).”
Towards a Framework for Attention Cueing in Instructional Animations: Guidelines for Research and Design (2009, background): “This may consequently challenge the resource limitations of the learner’s WM (Miller 1956) and hinder learning (Ayres and Paas 2007a; Paas et al. 2003).”
An Evolutionary Upgrade of Cognitive Load Theory: Using the Human Motor System and Collaboration to Support the Learning of Complex Cognitive Tasks (2012, background): “Cognitive load theorists have argued that dynamic visualizations can be ineffective if they create high extraneous cognitive loads (Ayres and Paas 2007a, b) defined as a cognitive load that can be avoided by changing an instructional design.”
Getting the point: Tracing worked examples enhances learning (2015, background): “Cognitive load theory generates the transient information effect to reflect the finding that learning is hindered because transient information does not allow students enough time to process it adequately and causes a high extraneous cognitive load (Ayres & Paas, 2007).”
Example-Based Learning: Integrating Cognitive and Social-Cognitive Research Perspectives (2010, background): “This is extremely cognitively demanding, especially for novice students, and might hamper learning (e.g., Ayres and Paas 2007).”