Learner control of instructional animations: a cognitive load perspective.

A number of experiments investigated the effectiveness of instructional advice coupled with learner control that allowed for self-pacing and self-sequencing techniques as a means of overcoming the transient information effect evident in animations. The post-instruction performance of a group of participants with high levels of available learner control through the incorporation of a timeline scrollbar was compared with performance of a group of learners that were provided with free-running animations that contained minimal levels of learner control. The first two experiments tested immediate recall of stroke order in writing Chinese characters and other abstract symbols. The materials differed in their amenability to pattern chunking however neither condition yielded significant differences between the groups. The third experiment tested recall and understanding of complex scientific information presented in the form of an integrated set of narrated animations. The groups performed equally well irrespective of whether the instructional design included high levels of user-control via a scrollbar or lower levels of user control. Observations revealed that many of the subjects failed to engage with the learner control in a manner that could facilitate the assimilation, integration and encoding of the requisite information. Therefore, the three experiments were repeated with the added inclusion of pre-training regarding the optimal use of the learner control facility. Further to this, the third experiment in the second series included an analysis of test scores with respect to the participants varying levels of prior knowledge. Participants tested for immediate recall of strokes in the first two experiments of the second series were significantly advantaged by the availability of a scrollbar with included pre-training in the form of explicit instructional advice on its effective use. In the third experiment, learners with low levels of prior knowledge who utilised the learner control tool in an informed manner performed significantly better than those with minimal learner control. There was a marginally significant interaction (an expertise reversal effect) between the effectiveness of learner control and levels of learner prior knowledge. The results indicate that the effectiveness of the timeline scrollbar may depend on learner prior knowledge and the provision of instructional guidance