EAT: Easy Animation Tools will help you cook up digital animation as an effective tool in your teaching menu. In this session you’ll taste three cloud based software tools to create animations for use in teaching courses or use as a student assignment. We will review the recipe for successful animation which incorporates the key ingredients of cognitive load theory, learner engagement strategies, and multimedia principles.
EAT: Easy Animation Tools will help you cook up digital animation as an effective tool in your teaching menu. In this session you’ll taste three cloud based software tools to create animations for use in teaching courses or use as a student assignment. We will review the recipe for successful animation which incorporates the key ingredients of cognitive load theory, learner engagement strategies, and multimedia principles ingredients of cognitive load theory, learner engagement strategies, and multimedia principles.
Objectives:
- Participants will show how animation can be used for cognitive or affective learning.
- Participants will demonstrate effective animation incorporating cognitive load theory and multimedia principles.
- Participants will test three online animation softwares.
Rational:
21st century technology has shifted teaching tools to a more advanced level making it necessary for educators to tune in today’s millennial learners. Animation can help by making education enjoyable, bridge the digital generation gap, and encourage higher order thinking while making complex information easily understandable using simple animation.
Research has proven retention of information is higher when it is communicated using both visual and verbal communication. Animation as an educational medium offers exciting possibilities for meeting the needs of 21st century learners. The use of animation instruction can significantly enhance student learning if properly designed and implemented.
Animation in education can play two roles.
- Teachers can create animations to teach concepts for cognitive processing and understanding
- Students can create animations for use as an affective learning tool which engages learners by creatively interacting with curricular content.
Instructors can use animation to show ideas and concepts visually, exactly how they want. Animation demonstrates how items come together or work together. Secondly, student created animation used as an affective learning tool attracts attention, engages the learner, and sustains motivation. Such affective animation is not focused on facilitating comprehension of any academic subject matter itself. Rather it supports educational activities that are interactive, creative, and motivational, enabling learners to “show what they know.”
Projected digital animation tools to be covered:
- VideoScribe - cloud
- Go Animate - cloud
- Explain Everything - app
References:
DeKoning B, et al (2009). Towards a framework for attention cueing in instructional animations: Guidelines for research and design. Educational Psychology Review 21, 113-140.
DeJong T (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional Science 38, 105-134.
Mayer RE (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mayer RE (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. Cognition and Instruction 19, 177-213.