Animation has potential to foster student learning, engagement and satisfaction. But with the popularity of animation amongst today’s learners, it can be intimidating and time consuming for faculty to perfect animation in the classroom. This session focuses on utilizing animation through computer applications to enhance the learning process.
The integration of animation in both the online and face-to-face classroom provides a number of benefits to enhance student learning, engagement, and satisfaction. Animation has always brought a certain value to learning. Research shows that students need visual stimulation as well as the ability to cognitively understand a concept in order to ultimately grasp what they are learning (Marbach-Ad, Rotbain, &Stavy, 2008). Animation also provides students with visual, auditory and kinesthetic stimulation allowing them to be more engaged and satisfied with the learning process.
With technology being on the forefront, learners are watching animation videos on ‘YouTube’ or ‘TeacherTube’ (Snelson & Elison-Bowers, 2009). This poses a demand for faculty to incorporate animation into the learning process.
The term animation can be defined as cartoons or computer imageries that are integrated into videos, 2D or 3D graphics (Szabo & Poohkay, 1996). Although animation is clearly seen as having many benefits, faculty struggle with incorporating animation into the classroom. Complicating the issue more, is the time and efficiency that learning and executing a lesson involving animation can sometimes take. Thus it is imperative for instructors to familiarize and learn the most current animation tools to assist with this need. Instructors must be able to look at the content that they are presenting and be able to add animation into their daily lesson plans.
This workshop provides faculty with a variety of different ways they can incorporate the use of animation into their online or face to face classroom. Topics covered include: web 2.0 animation tools, instructional animation strategies, along with a brief overview of the benefits that animation can bring to the classroom.