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Description

Visualizations are often used to enhance comprehension of complex and dynamic scientific content. It is, however, to a certain degree unclear what kind of visualization (e.g., dynamic vs. static) is most helpful under certain conditions.
Accordingly, a goal of this project was to investigate the instructional effectiveness of dynamic visualizations (i.e. animations) compared to static visualizations in illustrating dynamic scientific content - more precisely, in demonstrating the physical principles underlying fish locomotion.
Consequently, we considered learning characteristics and strategies occurring during learning with the help of such visualizations on the one hand and, moreover, the influence of different design principles of dynamic and static visualizations – also with respect to different learning objectives.

Publications

• Gerjets, P., Imhof, B., Kühl, T., Pfeiffer, V., Scheiter, K. & Gemballa, S. (in press). Using static and dynamic visualizations to support the comprehension of complex dynamic phenomena in the Natural Sciences. In L. Verschaffel, E. de Corte, T. de Jong, & J. Elen (Eds.), Use of external representations in reasoning and problem solving: Analysis and improvement (New Perspectives on Learning and Instruction). London: Routledge.
• Kühl, T., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Edelmann, J. (in press). The influence of text modality on learning with static and dynamic visualizations. Computers in Human Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.05.008