Interrogation of a dynamic visualization during learning

“The associated competition for attention between different graphic elements constituting the animated display is likely to result in effects analogous to the split-attention effects that have been investigated between pictures and text (e.g. Mayer & Moreno, 1998).”

“Dynamic visualisation, such as computer animation, has become increasingly popular in computer-based education across a range of subject domains and education levels (Lowe, 2004).”

“Lowe (1999, 2004) found that in viewing realistic dynamic displays, novices are distracted by perceptually salient aspects of the displays that are not necessarily thematically relevant.”

“Despite the widespread use of animations in educational practice (Lowe, 2001), little is known about how such learning materials are cognitively processed (Lowe, 1999, 2004) and how they should be adapted to make learning more effective.”

“Perceptually salient rather than conceptually relevant information may attract the attention of novices (Lowe, 2004).”

“More immediate data gathering approaches have been gaining favour (Jarodzka, Scheiter, Gerjets, & Van Gog, 2010; Kriz & Hegarty, 2007; Lowe, 2004a; Schneider & Boucheix, 2006).”

“In meteorology, the domain of interest here, novices tend to focus primary on a weather map’s superficial features, whereas experts focus on elements that are thematically relevant (Lowe, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2004).”

“Lowe suggests that the cognitive load requirements of using these exploratory strategies were too high for learners and recommends the inclusion of scaffolds to guide learners (Lowe 2004).”

“One possibility for these null findings is that the participants may not have utilized the interactive or signaling features of the animations (cf. Pane et al., 1996; Lowe, 2004).”

“…approaches are inadequate if informed and meaningful participation is desired, given the difficulty many non-experts have in deciphering and understanding maps and other scientific information displays (Kozma and Russell, 1997; Lewis and Sheppard, 2005; Lowe, 2003, 2004; Thorndike and Stasz, 1980).”

“of interactivity in dynamic e-learning environments ( Lowe 2004; Schnotz and Rasch 2005; Wouters et al. 2007).”

“However, research also demonstrates how students using visualizations can focus on superficial aspects (Lowe, 2004), overestimate their understanding (Chiu & Linn, 2012), and fail to connect virtual representations to the depicted real-life scientific phenomena (Chiu, 2010).”

“Previous research suggests that such metacognitive understanding is often lacking (Hegarty, 2004; Lowe, 1999, 2004; Rieber, Tzeng, & Tribble, 2004).”

“Second, our 3D digital animations were produced before studying how students may cognitively process them (see Chandler, 2004; Lowe, 2004).”

“…2004) other studies show little or no effect (Harrison, 1995; Kinze, Sherwood, & Loofbourrow, 1989; Lazarowitz & Huppert, 1993; Mayer, Hegarty, Mayer, & Campbell, 2005; Palmiter & Elkerton, 1993; Pane, Corbett, & John, 1996) or even a negative effect (Lowe, 1999, 2004; Schnotz & Grzondiel, 1999).”

“This temporary strengthening of conspicuity can be thought of as a transition effect (Lowe, 2004) brought about by their sudden appearance in the display.”

“…prediction on research demonstrating that people prefer realistic displays of data, even when they are better served by more abstract displays (Smallman & St. John, 2005), and research indicating that novices are particularly drawn to the most dynamic and salient aspects of displays (Lowe, 2004).”

“…that addressing the first two research questions has, in part, contributed to recent calls in the literature (e.g., Brna et al., 2001; Ploetzner & Lowe, 2004; Reimann, 2003) for more research that can help researchers and teachers understand how students learn from, and use ERs during learning.”

“Because dynamic visualizations can display changes in space over time, they are considered to be more authentic and informative with the assumption that they can improve learners’ understanding of the ontological nature of the represented phenomenon (Lowe, 2004; Schnotz & Lowe, 2008).”

“The explosion in the use of computer visualizations, however, is occurring well in advance of adequate research-based accounts of how learners cognitively process and learn from such instructional resources (Lowe, 2004).”

“Some studies have found significant advantages of interactivity (e.g., Schwan and Riempp 2004), whereas others have found no difference between interactive and non-interactive students (e.g., Lowe 2004).”

“Finally, the high degree of conceptive and cognitive processes that are required during learning with animation could cause, according to Lowe (2004), the ‘‘overwhelming” effect.”

“Finally, in other studies, animations do not allow better learning (Schnotz & Grzondziel, 1999; Schnotz, Bannert, & Seufert, 2002; Palmiter, Elkerton, & Bagett 1991; Palmiter & Elkerton, 1993) or only for experts (Lowe, 1999, 2004a).”

“This concept has been supported in other settings (Chou, Hsu, & Yao, 1997; Drake, 2003; Gadanidis, Sedig, & Liang, 2004; Lowe, 2004; Ploetzner & Lowe, 2004), suggesting that the ability to concretely represent abstract concepts aids in comprehension of mathematics.”

“However, Lowe (2004a) suggests that simply providing user control (e.g, interaction capabilities) to an animation does not always result in the desired learning improvements.”

“As research on learning from animations has shown, many learners are unable to cope with these requirements, especially if they possess relatively little knowledge about the animated content (e.g., Lowe, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2008).”

“In a series of studies comparing expert and novice comprehension of weather maps, Lowe (1994, 1996, 2004) found that novices and experts view weather maps differently.”

“of increased time-on-task, which has also been hinted at by Mayer and Moreno (2003), could not be investigated.”

“For example, they do not use the interactive controls, or use interactivity to attend to superficial rather than thematically relevant information (Lowe, 2004).”

“These hypotheses echo assumptions made in the model of animation processing by Lowe and Boucheix (2008); see also Boucheix and Lowe (2010) model of animation processing, in”

“this explosion in the use of animation is occurring well in advance of adequate research based accounts of how people cognitively process and learn from such resources’’ (Lowe, 2004).”

“Interactivity, or the user-control function, is important to achieve learner apprehension (Lowe, 2004).”

“Visually subtle aspects that are nevertheless crucial to the building of a high quality mental model tend to be missed by domain novices [6, 26].”

“For instance, in addition to processing continuously changing information, students need to identify and relate both spatially, as well as temporally, separated components of the pictorial display (cf. Lowe, 1999, 2004, 2008).”

“…virtual labs to create a curriculum to accompany the Frame technology, suchasguidedinquiry(Hmelo-Silver etal.2007); instructional patterns such as predict–observe–explain (White and Gunstone 1992); and helping students to observe relevant, instead of superficial, details of simulations (Lowe 2004).”

“Nevertheless, it was found that within the context of complex systems, there is no advantage to the user control over the animation (e.g., Boucheix, 2007; Lowe, 2004), so that the effectiveness of the animation is not limited to the cases in which the learner is required to carry out specific actions in addition to wa…”

“Lowe (2003, 2004) found that subjects adopted simple comprehension strategies that focused on easily perceived surface features when learning from complex and unfamiliar dynamic visualizations.”

“Novice students studying chemical reactions may only pay attention to surface features of dynamic visualizations (e.g., Lowe 2004) or fail to make inferences about how the visualization connects to conservation of mass or chemical reactions.”

“Dynamic representations are also better when learners are allowed to manipulate the content of the simulation, when they are interactive (increasing germane load) (Bodemer et al. 2004) and when users engage in active content exploration (Lowe 2004).”

“Merely providing changerelated information as an analogue dynamic representation does not guarantee that learners will necessarily be able to extract its key aspects (Lowe, 1999, 2003, 2004).”

“…to promote the effectiveness of learning from animation, some researches offer various strategies or methods, such as interactive animation (Lowe, 2004), attention cueing (e.g., coloring, arrows, shading, texture, highlight, appearance time, visual cues, anti-cueing, etc.) (de Koning,…”

“A developing body of research suggests that there may be situations in which some people learn more by mentally simulating an event than by viewing an external dynamic representation of that event (Hegarty 2004; Narayanan and Hegarty 2002; Lowe 2004).”

“Inversely, animation may decrease learners’ cognitive engagement (underwhelming, Lowe, 2004) and lead to an illusion of understanding (Bétrancourt, 2005).”

“For example, Lowe (2004) found that when participants were asked to make predictions on weather maps, novices adopted more ‘local’ strategies, examining the maps bit-by-bit at the expense of the more global details.”

“They include giving the learner control over the animation’s display regime (Boucheix, 2008; Lowe, 2004, 2008; Scheiter, 2014), modifying the animation’s presentation speed (Boucheix, Lowe, & Bugaiska, 2015; Fischer, Lowe, & Schwan, 2008; Meyer, Rasch, & Schnotz, 2009), subdividing the…”

“Previous research suggests that understanding how to interact with different visualizations effectively and how they can be used to accomplish tasks is often lacking (Lowe 1999, 2004, H egarty2004).”

“Accordingly, there has been an increasing tendency to include dynamic visualizations in multimedia learning environments (Bodemer et al. 2005; Lowe 2004 ).”

“Lowe (2004) concluded that participants tended to address content in small chunks instead of using more integrated approaches.”

“As a result, some critical information can be missed or inaccurately perceived, especially because novice learners tend to focus on perceptually salient changes that are not necessarily conceptually relevant ( Lowe 2004 ).”

“While educators employ external representations to improve students’ understanding, such representations also place specific demands on students (for a collection of papers see Ploetzner & Lowe, 2004).”

“…displays contra-dicts this assumption, suggesting that not all individuals have the metacognitive skills to manipulate said software and animations to learn effectively (Morrison et al., 2000; Hegarty et al., 2002, 2008; Hegarty, 2004; Lowe, 2004; Rieber et al., 2004; Cohen and Hegarty, 2007).”

“knowledge to new situations (e.g., Goldstone & Son, 2005; Lowe, 2004; Tversky, Morrison, & Betrancourt, 2002; Yuviler-Gavish, Yechiam, & Kallai, 2011).”

“This issue led to several studies that examined the cognitive process of dynamic media learning, based on cognitive load theory (Lowe, 2004).”

“…and static visualizations has been intensively investigated for the past decade, little evidence supports that the animation is superior to static graphics in terms of facilitating better learning outcomes (e.g., Chandler 2009; Mayer et al. 2005; Ploetzner and Lowe 2004; Tversky et al. 2002).”

“They may fail to understand the meanings of visual elements or neglect important aspects and focus on peripheral ones [8, 16].”

“It is generally assumed that viewers find animations more appealing than static graphics (ChanLin, 2000), and that animations will be more effective in facilitating uptake of information on relationships and processes because of their inherent dynamism (Ploetzner & Lowe, 2004).”

“, electricity [25]; lightning [26]; gravitational lensing [1]; meteorological changes [2]).”