Animation of Diagrams: An Aid to Learning?

Abstract

Static graphics are often used to present key aspects of dynamic instructional content (e.g. chemical reaction diagrams in Chemistry and weather maps in Meteorology). However, because static graphics represent the dynamics of a situation by implication only, students sometimes find them difficult to interpret properly. In contrast, animated graphics can represent dynamics quite explicitly. Studying relevant animations may help students become more adept at learning from related static representations (see Lowe, 1995a). In the case of beginning students of meteorology, being able to predict a subsequent pattern of meteorological markings from a given weather map is a very important skill (but one they learn slowly and imperfectly by studying static weather maps).