Animated and static concept maps enhance learning from spoken narration

Abstract

An animated concept map represents verbal information in a node-link diagram that changes over time. The goals of the experiment were to evaluate the instructional effects of presenting an animated concept map concurrently with semantically equivalent spoken narration. The study used a 2 × 2 factorial design in which an animation factor (animated vs. static) was crossed with a representation factor (concept map vs. text). Students (N = 140) were randomly assigned to study one of four presentations on the human nervous system. The dependent measures were tests of free recall, knowledge and transfer. The concept map groups significantly outperformed the text groups on free recall and transfer. The animated concept map group did not significantly outperform the static map group. The authors hypothesize that the animated concept map provided no advantage over the static concept map because participants in both conditions were able to use the spoken narrative to sequence their reading.