A study of the effects of digital animation on students\u27 learning of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -LEED

The use of animations in educational contexts is not new. However, the exploration of their effectiveness as supplementary materials for lecture-based classes to help students improve their short-term memory is not as common. This paper outlines an experiment to explore the impact of an educational animation in contrast to a text with the same material about Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Evaluation of two groups of college students suggests that there is significant efficacy in using the educational animation. The comparison of an educational intervention with animation as the helping material versus an intervention supported with the provided text implies that students achieve higher grades and improve more under the influence of the former intervention. The study forms the basis for an ongoing research in different directions. Such directions include: researching the effect of the animation on long-term memory, studying the animation as an independent teaching material, and conducting a research with multiple numbers of animation and texts