User-controllable animations: cure or curse?

Associate Professor Richard Lowe Faculty of Education Curtin University of Technology Australia r.lowe@educ.curtin.edu.au Abstract
User-controllable animations are an increasingly popular component of technology-based learning materials. University teachers can now easily author these resources for inclusion in their courses. Supposed benefits of user control include the provision of learning environments that closely accord with prevailing cognitively-oriented theories of learning. Dynamic playback facilities of the type provided by Quicktime offer lecturers a simple and convenient way to add a significant amount of user control to existing animated explanations. However, merely providing students with this powerful facility by no means guarantees that their learning will be enhanced. The secret is to find ways that ensure learners use the provided control effectively. Examples will be presented that reveal the potential advantages and disadvantages of usercontrollable animations. The presentation will show why the educational results from such animations are so often disappointing. Reasons for this lack of success will be explained in terms of the perceptual and cognitive challenges that face learners with respect to user control. Based on this analysis, practical approaches for designing educationally effective user-controllable animations will be demonstrated.

Introduction Compared with other forms of depiction employed as aids to learning, educational animation has a relatively short history. The earliest examples date from the nineteenth century and consisted of very short animated sequences displayed via somewhat crude mechanical devices such as the phenakistoscope and zoetrope. In the twentieth century, the advent of motion picture film techniques and the development of television allowed longer, more sophisticated animations to be produced. However, the available technology severely limited the extent to which these animations could provide users with control over the way their content was presented. In recent years, technological advances in the computer industry have stripped away these limitations. User-friendly animation authoring packages combined with display software such as Quicktime allow almost anyone to generate animated educational resources that provide for extensive user control by learners. Animations have become an integral part of multimedia approaches to learning (Mayer & Moreno, 2002) but guidelines for its effective use have been slow to emerge (Milheim, 1993). In an educational climate that emphasizes student-centred learning and individual construction of knowledge, the availability of such control is highly valued. However, research evidence is accumulating that providing learners with animations that give them a high level of exploratory freedom is not always beneficial (Lowe 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003; Schnotz, Bckheler, & Grzondziel, 1999; Schnotz & Lowe, 2003). This paper discusses the potential benefits of user-controllable animations, explores possible reasons for why these benefits may not be obtained, and suggests practical design approaches for maximizing the effectiveness of such animations. What are user-controllable animations?

There are various ways in which user-control can be provided with animations. Some of these are extremely sophisticated in offering interactive animation objects that respond to a mouse click or roll-over to provide alternative pathways through the content. Authoring these forms of user-controllable animations remains a relatively demanding task requiring considerable levels of specialist skill. However, a far easier way to provide quite a large measure of user control with animations is to take advantage of the built-in facilities in software such as Quicktime. The video-like controls that are a standard part of the display options provide a manipulative shell into which an existing animation can be inserted in order to add such control. This instantly offers learners the possibilities to stop, rewind and replay, reverse, speed-up, slow-down, and step-frame the animation. Busy educational practitioners find this to be a powerful way of giving their animated explanations a significant measure of user control with a minimum of fuss. They can concentrate their efforts on designing and developing the content aspects of the animation rather than spending considerable amounts of time trying to author interactive events. As a consequence, the present paper will focus upon this more straightforward approach to user control. How user-controllable animations could facilitate learning (a cure?) Designers of educational resources need little convincing that user-controllable animations are likely to enhance learning. Their ready acceptance of this likelihood is consistent with more general convictions about the value of student-centred learning in general. User control of animations can therefore be seen as a cure for the educational ills associated with traditional animations that rely upon instructor-centred approaches and simply present the whole set of dynamic content in a pre-determined linear manner. With this type of animation, learners were placed in a passive, receptive role rather than being treated as active, constructive participants in the learning process. In contrast, user-controllable animations allow for a much higher level of learner engagement. Recently there has been considerable attention given to user control in the wider context of multimedia learning. For example, Sims and Hedberg (1996) have listed various ways in which students can be given control over how they learn about a particular set of content in a multimedia environment. Control can be provided over the content, sequence, pacing, context, presentation method and content emphasis by incorporating different types of interaction possibilities within the multimedia materials. Justifications for providing such control are generally based on arguments about its affective or its cognitive benefits. The affective arguments cite benefits associated with the students feelings of control (empowerment) such as increased interest and enthusiasm. However, the cognitive arguments rest upon assumed benefits for the processes of knowledge construction rather than attributing gains largely to motivational effects. One of the more powerful arguments for the cognitive benefits of user control rests upon the limitations of the human information processing system. Our limited capacity to process information can restrict the benefit we obtain from educational experiences. Because of constraints on the capacity of human working memory, learners are restricted in the amount of information they are able to process at one time. If this is exceeded, cognitive overload can occur and prejudice learning (Sweller, 1994). Hegarty, Narayanan & Freitas (2002) point out the potential for negative consequences if the pace of

information presentation is greater than the learners capacity to process it satisfactorily. User control provides the opportunity for learners to work through an animation at whatever pace suits them, rather than being at the mercy of a pre-determined presentation regime. How user-controllable animations may impede learning (a curse?) There is no doubt that user-controllable animations permit learners to explore the presented subject matter in highly individualistic ways. It would certainly be wonderful if these explorations allowed individuals to learn more productively by shaping the educational experience associated with using such animations to their own interests, needs, and capacities. Unfortunately, the mere provision of user control does not guarantee that learners will employ this facility in ways that are educationally beneficial. As with any potentially powerful tool, the ultimate effectiveness of user controlled animation as a tool for learning depends on whether or not a particular individual has the knowledge and skills required to use it correctly. This point about whether or not a learner has the ability to take advantage of user controllable animations may initially seem unconvincing when we consider how easy it is to use the controls in products such as Quicktime. It takes only a minute or so of demonstration before even very young children become adept in using these controls. However, the crucial educational question concerns what learners do with these controls once they can operate them fluently. This is because it is the way they explore the subject matter contained in the animation that determines whether or not the intended learning outcomes will be achieved. Educational animations are often information-rich environments that present their content in ways that pose particular challenges for learners with respect to perceptual and cognitive processing. Because information varies across space and time during the course of an animation, users must continually search the display to locate material that is relevant to their particular learning goal. This requires that their attention be directed to different regions within the display area at different times as the depiction changes. The effectiveness with which learners employ the user control facilities provided with an animation depends fundamentally on how well they are equipped to handle this interrogation process. Unfortunately, they are often ill-prepared to interrogate the available content adequately due to a lack of appropriate background knowledge and strategies. An Example Explanatory animations are often considered particularly useful for introducing students to processes and concepts that may be difficult for them to understand via conventional means (such as textual or mathematical presentations). However, in such cases, the students lack of background knowledge of the presented content can severely limit their capacity to interrogate a user controllable animation in a productive fashion. This is because their interrogation is more likely to be driven by the immediate perceptual characteristics of the animation than would the interrogation of someone with a high level of background knowledge in the content domain. An example will help to make this clear. Figure 1 shows a frame from an explanatory animation that depicts the operation of a water pump air control valve. In graphic terms, it is not particularly complex; it contains relatively few

graphic entities and these are arranged in a regular manner with a minimum of visual clutter. Let us suppose that this animation is provided as one of several resources intended to help learners work out how this type of valve operates. The assumption may be that learners will explore this animation in various ways and, as a result, construct their own understandings of its functioning. An air control valve is typically attached to the side of water tank that stores water pumped from a source such as a bore. Its purpose is to re-pressurize the air above the stored water to compensate for the reduction in air pressure that occurs inside the tank over time. Such re-pressurization is necessary to ensure that water will flow freely from the tank when required. The animation shows how the valve automatically injects a charge of air into the tank every time the pump is operated.

Figure 1. Frame from air control valve animation

Perceptual and Cognitive Considerations Learners who are unfamiliar with the subject matter depicted in animations (as with other graphics, Cheng, Lowe, & Scaife, 2001) are heavily reliant on the fundamental information gained in a bottom-up manner via their raw perceptions of the display. This dependence on perceptions is a result of their lack of stored knowledge about the subject matter (particularly with respect to what aspects are important and where in the animation those aspects are likely to be found). Being ill-equipped to carry out a top-down (knowledge driven) exploration of the animation, such learners are primarily guided by the perceptual characteristics of the animation (display driven). Unfortunately, the information in a display that is most readily perceptible may not be information that is most crucial for understanding the depicted process. Conversely, information of low perceptibility is sometimes highly important. Highly conspicuous information may be of marginal thematic 4

relevance while quite inconspicuous information is absolutely central to the theme of the animation. Learners who are primarily dependent on their perceptions for extracting information from displays are therefore in danger of either not understanding the explanation presented or developing misunderstandings about the subject matter. These dangers become particularly likely when learners have a large measure of freedom in the way they can interrogate an animation (as is the case with user-controllable animations). Examples of the processing challenges that are faced by learners as a result will now be discussed. Functioning of the air control valve begins with the pump switch and ends when the charge of air is added to the tank. In order to understand how this valve functions, learners need to follow an interdependent series of events that together constitute a cause-effect chain linking the initial event with the final event. In the animation, these two key events are depicted in widely separated locations (near the bottom and top of the display respectively). This separation has perceptual consequences because it is sufficiently large as to prevent the learner from focusing upon both events at the same time. Rather, by focusing upon one of these events (using foveal vision), the other event is perceptually sidelined (in peripheral vision). Figure 2 simulates the effect of this aspect of perception. In order to relate these two events, the learner must therefore scan across the display to establish clearly that the air charge event follows the pump turning off event.

Figure 2. Simulated effect of limited foveal vision

The region between the pump switch and the air injection point contains the mechanism responsible for preparing the charge of air that will be injected into the water tank. This mechanism is made up of two main parts; (i) a float confined within a cylinder, and (ii) a snifter device attached to the top of the cylinder. These two parts are responsible for intermediate events that connect the operation of the pump to the air-charging action. However, while they are both crucial links in the chain of causality, they differ greatly in perceptibility. The float is a relatively large component within the total display area, it is located in a fairly central region of the display, it is distinctively coloured, and it moves across a considerable area during its operation. By contrast, the snifter is small,

peripherally located, uncoloured, and moves only slightly. For a learner who is highly reliant on perception for interrogating this animation, these characteristics mean that the float is far more conspicuous than the snifter. The learners attention is therefore likely to be directed to the floats behaviour while that of the snifter is neglected. Unfortunately, the behaviour of the perceptually insignificant snifter is actually highly relevant in terms of the air control valves operation. It is the opening and closing of the snifter that creates the charge of air and allows it to be injected into the water tank. Despite its relatively low perceptibility, learners need to direct their attention to this item and analyse its behaviour carefully in order to understand a central aspect of the whole process. When the user controls how the animation is presented, this crucial role of the snifter may be overlooked by all but the most systematic of learners because it is so inconspicuous. This would be a major impediment to understanding the air control valve system and result in less efficient learning. While it is necessary for learners to locate all the entities that are relevant to the operation of the air control valve system, merely finding them is only part of the total comprehension task. Once these components have been identified, their functioning must be determined. This involves both tracking each components behaviour and interrelating these behaviours in order to trace through the cause-effect chain. Here again, relative perceptibility plays an important role in these aspects of comprehension. The cyclic change in the floats position with the rising and falling of the water in the cylinder is intrinsically more conspicuous than the periodic opening and closing of the snifter. However, embedded in this overall behaviour of the float are two key states; (i) the resting of the float base when it reaches the bottom of the cylinder and (ii) the sealing of the section beneath the snifter when it reaches the top of the cylinder. It is particularly important for learners to notice this second state and appreciate its significance in the air injection process. The high perceptibility of the repeated movement of the float as a whole tends to mask this transitory fine detail making it less likely to be noticed by learners who are not primed to direct their attention to this key event. Related to this second state are (a) the opening of the snifter, (b) the upward movement of the float to compress the air that has entered through the open snifter, and (c) the associated closing of the snifter so that air is injected into the water tank. These other events are closely tied together in time and their various interdependencies must be attended to and comprehended if learners are to develop a proper understanding of the air control valves operation. The fact that many of these conjunctions are of short duration makes it more difficult for learners to processes this information adequately at a single, full speed viewing. Close analysis of the events and how they relate to each other is necessary and this can be facilitated by repeated inspections at slower speeds. However, the learner first needs to be aware that this type of inspection regime is required and at what stage in the animation such detailed analysis is required. Unfortunately, the animation itself provides no intrinsic visual cues as to when and where this is necessary. While a person who is already knowledgeable about pump operations in general may know what to look out for, this is typically not the case with learners who are new to this field. Design considerations

The educational effectiveness of user-controllable animations will depend to a large extent on the amount of support learners are given regarding how to: extract key aspects from the flow of information they are presented with while viewing such animations. This extraction requires that learners search the animation productively with irrelevant aspects being ignored but all those that are key to an understanding of the subject matter being located and identified. This can be a challenging task when learners are new to the subject area concerned (c.f. Winn, 1993). combine these aspects in a way that leads to comprehension of the presented material. This combination requires that learners assemble the separate information units they have extracted and form appropriate connections between them. It is vital for the development of correct understandings that such construction processes lead to accurate and comprehensive mental models of the depicted content (see JohnsonLaird, 1983).

Many educational animations intended as user-controllable learning resources provide no particular support to learners for the extraction and combination of key aspects of the depicted content. Rather, they simply present the content in a way that faithfully mirrors the dynamic process being represented. In one sense, this approach with its emphasis on behavioural realism is justifiable because it presents a correct view of the how the depicted subject matter changes over time. So, with the air control valve example referred to above, the main actions involved in its operation are presented authentically, in much the same way as they would occur in the real situation. However, this behavioural realism can also act to obscure key aspects so they are difficult for the learner to extract from the animation and combine properly in order to build a coherent understanding of the processes involved. The guidelines below address this issue and provide ways that designers of usercontrollable animations can provide learners with more support for their interrogation of the available information. Figure 3 shows just one of the many approaches that can be employed.

Figure 3. Manipulation of display to cue key aspects and relationships

Guidelines for design Support appropriate direction of attention: In order to locate key aspects of the presented information, learners must search user controllable animations both spatially and temporally. One approach for facilitating this demanding task is to reduce the area (both spatial and temporal) over which learners need to search. One way to reduce this search area involves zooming on a subset of the display. As well as removing extraneous surrounding material, this has the added advantages of increasing the size of the material in question which makes it both more perceptually salient and more detailed. However, zooming also has the consequence of removing the broader context of the area involved which prevents the learner observing relationships between items in widely separated regions of the display. This potential disadvantage can be eliminated by highlighting key aspects and visually deemphasising the remainder of the display (as shown in Figure 3). More generally, various techniques can be used to increase the perceptual salience of key aspects so that they are more likely to capture learner attention (colour, symbolic cues, exaggeration, etc.). A potential disadvantage of such visual techniques is that they may clutter the display even further and so actually make it more difficult for learners to carry out productive search. Alternatives are to use narration which directs the learner to attend to particular regions of the display or provide learners with ancillary materials such as worksheet activities that require them to explore selected areas in depth. Reduce the likelihood of split attention problems: In considering the air control valve example, we saw that related events were taking place in separate locations across the display area. This spatial separation of events increases the likelihood that attention to one event results in the neglect of another associated event. The learners attention is split across several items of information which has the potential to reduce the effectiveness of search processes. Splitting of attention is not limited to the spatial dimension. It can also occur when several key events are widely separated in time instead of space. If these events all need to be extracted as the basis for the building of relationships (see below), it is important that learners do not neglect those that are less salient because they attend selectively to those that are highly conspicuous. Dealing with the possibility of split attention may require animation designers to intentionally manipulate how the content is displayed in space and time. Such manipulation can be highly effective when it involves deliberate distortion of the behavioural realism found in so many approaches to user controllable animations. The purpose of these distortions is to provide learners with opportunities for processing all relevant information units in a sequential manner that removes split attention problems but allows for the combination of these units in a systematic way. Facilitate the establishment of connections: It is one thing for learners to be find relevant items of information within an animation, but quite another for them to be able to link these information fragments together into a meaningful whole. A

collection of isolated fragments extracted from an animation is rather like a list of disconnected facts; it does not constitute an understanding of the subject matter. With animations, the individual pieces of information that need to be bound together in order to form a coherent knowledge structure are separated in time as well as space. The transitory nature of much information within animations can make it particularly difficult to carry out the careful analysis required to establish important connections. Learners can be supported in these necessary cognitive processes by explicitly signaling the key connections with clear visual or verbal cues (c.f. above). In addition, the animation can provide built-in variations in playing regime (even stationary frames) that both signal important segments of the animated sequence and provide learners with the required information in a more accessible form. The design guidelines presented here do not claim to be comprehensive. Rather, they offer some preliminary suggestions about possible ways to develop a more principled approach to the development of user controllable animations. Because they are based on research findings about how learners process dynamic information, these guidelines are applicable across many different content domains and learning tasks. Summary Animations have a popular component of technology-based learning resources. They are not only attractive but also have the potential to greatly facilitate the learning of content that involves movement and other change processes. The power of animations to enhance learning can be further increased by giving learners a measure control over the way the information they contain is presented. However, this requires that educators understand the benefits on offer, appreciate that these benefits are not automatically achieved by merely be incorporating user-control, and can design animated explanations that take proper advantage of the opportunities that user-controllable animations present. Potential benefits to learning Quicktime provides an easy way for educators to offer learners user-controllable animated explanations of dynamic content. User-controllable animations have the potential to promote more active approaches to learner and greater learner engagement with the content. Control over the presentation of animations can both increase learners motivation and support their knowledge construction processes. Ensuring potential is realized In order to benefit from user-controllable animations, learners must be able to employ the available control in educationally effective ways. A major challenge to learners who are unfamiliar with the content depicted in such animations is to carry out their search for key information in an appropriate manner. Because strictly realistic presentations of dynamic content may be visually misleading as to the relative importance of various aspects of the information presented, animations require careful design. Design approaches 9

Use zooming, variations in visual emphasis, and narration to direct learners attention to key information within the animation Manipulate related aspects of content to bring them closer together in both space and time in order to emphasise their relatedness. Build in cues (visual, verbal) and pre-determined playing speed variations to signal which aspects of the content are related and assist learners to make connections between them.

Conclusion User controllable animations have enormous potential as a resource for learning about dynamic subject matter. However, their effectiveness as an educational tool very much depends on the extent to which their design takes account of the challenges involved for learners in interrogating the animated content in a productive fashion. Much current practice in the use of user controllable animations places too much faith on learners capacities to carry out productive interrogation. When such animations are used with learners who are new to the domain being studied, it is important to provide them with adequate support for the proper extraction and combination of key aspects of the material presented. The design of animations needs to move beyond mere presentation of realistic behaviours to the provision of animated learning resources in which the content has been manipulated in principled ways in order to facilitate learning processes. References
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