The use of tracing to reduce transience in instructional animations: a cognitive load theory perspective

Animation has an inherent advantage over static graphics when presenting dynamic content because its accurate and continuous depiction eliminates the need for mental animation. Simultaneously, animation has an inherent disadvantage because its transient nature requires more working memory resources to hold information elements temporarily active. This thesis has contended that for animation to be an effective instructional tool, its transiency must be controlled with an appropriate design to avoid overloading learners’ severely limited working memory and eroding any advantages animations may have in comparison with equivalent static representations. A tracing design that kept key information available as a trace throughout a sequence of displays was investigated as a method for reducing transience in animation. A total of five experimental studies compared relative instructional efficiency of animation (with and without pause/play feature) and equivalent static formats, each designed with either trace or no trace facilities, from a cognitive load perspective. The experimental materials presented dynamic electrical circuit operation to relatively inexperienced learners receiving training from a post-secondary technical education institution. As expected, in all the five studies, the tracing feature consistently reduced transience in the continuous animation format, resulting in this format to be either as efficient as any of the equivalent static formats or more efficient when the level of content complexity was within the learners’ current level of prior knowledge. Besides the tracing feature, a pause/play feature was also found to be able to reduce transience when incorporated into animation. With transience reduced by both tracing and pause/play effects, animations resulted in more efficient learning than their static equivalents when the level of content complexity was within the learners’ current level of prior knowledge. For relatively inexperienced learners who tended to use the pause/play feature in the animation infrequently, the tracing method compensated for reduced effect of this feature in managing transience. The main findings demonstrated that instructional animations can indeed be superior to static graphics when their transience is controlled with appropriate designs using pause/play or tracing features.