Investigating Means to Reduce Cognitive Load from Animations

Abstract

This paper covers an experiment designed to investigate the relationship between the didactical setting and learning effects with animations. We investigated whether the cognitive load imposed by animations could be reduced when the students could control the flow of the animation. We did not find an effect due to the fact that the students did not actively use this feature to take more control of the presentation. Further, by applying differentiated knowledge measures, we investigated if the characteristics of the acquired knowledge were related to the characteristics of the multimedia presentation. We found that media do not influence knowledge acquisition homogeneously. The multimedia effects found in this study are in line with known principles of didactical multimedia design. This study sheds light on some theoretical aspects involved in the complex interaction between learning content, presentation, learning, and resulting knowledge.