Although feedback from interface agents has recently attracted increasing research attention, most studies emphasize the cognitive influences. Thus, the effect of each feedback type on student perception remains unclear. This study focuses on three types of feedback from interface agents to clarify student perception of single feedback and…

Educational agents (including animal companions) are a kind of interface agent, which is a significant component in educational systems, and has great impacts on student learning. However, with the development of emerging technologies (e.g., tangible technology), few studies have yet investigated how tangible technology can be used to combine with…

The main purpose of this study was to provide instructional suggestions for supporting science learning in digital environments based on a review of eye tracking studies in e-learning related areas. Thirty-three eye-tracking studies from 2005 to 2014 were selected from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database for review. Through a…

This study aimed to examine the relative effectiveness of using an animation versus static pictures in terms of supporting the learning of genetics. To provide a methodologically sound comparison, the two sessions were constructed to be equivalent and were designed based on principles provided by the cognitive theory of multimedia learning and the…

Simulation and modeling activities, a key point of computational thinking, are currently not being integrated into the science classroom. This paper describes a new visual programming tool entitled the Simulation Creation Toolkit. The Simulation Creation Toolkit is a high level pattern-based phenomenological approach to bringing rapid simulation…

This study demonstrates a game-based learning (GBL) approach to engage students in learning and enhance their programming skills. The paper gives a detailed narrative of how an educational game was mapped with the curriculum of a prescribed programming course in a computing diploma study programme. Two separate student cohorts were invited to…

Advances in information technologies have resulted in the use of pedagogical agents to facilitate learning. Although several studies have been conducted to examine the effects of pedagogical agents on learning, little is known about gender stereotypes of agents and how those stereotypes influence student learning and attitudes. This study…

Since the complex and transient information in instructional animations requires more cognitive resources, the segmenting principle has been proposed to reduce cognitive overload by providing smaller chunks with pauses between segments. This study examined the effects of different types of activities during pauses in a segmented animation. Four…

Electrical tests involve high risk; therefore utility companies require highly qualified electricians and efficient training. Recently, training for electrical tests has been supported by virtual reality systems; nonetheless, these training systems are not yet adaptive. We propose a b-learning model to support adaptive and distance training. The…

This study investigated the effectiveness of various types of worked-out examples used in pre-training to optimize the cognitive load and enhance learners' comprehension of the content in an animation-based learning environment. An animation-based learning environment was developed specifically for this study. The participants were divided into…

Animated pedagogical agents have become popular in multimedia learning with combined delivery of verbal and non-verbal forms of information. In order to reduce unnecessary cognitive load caused by such multiple forms of information and also to foster generative cognitive processing, multimedia design principles with social cues are suggested…

Nowadays, Web-based learning systems have become popular because they can provide multiple tools, among which hierarchical maps are widely used to support teaching and learning. However, traditional hierarchical maps may let learners easily get lost within large information space. This study proposes an animated hierarchical map to address this…

This study was designed to investigate the benefit of inclusion of various verbal elements in 3D talking-head on pronunciation learning among non-native speakers. In particular, the study examines the effects of three different multimedia presentation strategies in 3D talking-head Mobile-Assisted-Language-Learning (MALL) on the learning…

Humans have an evolved embodied cognition that equips them to deal easily with the natural movements of object manipulations. Hence, learning a manipulative task is generally more effective when watching animations that show natural motions of the task, rather than equivalent static pictures. The present study was completed to explore this…

This study investigated the effects of a pedagogical agent that cued relevant information in a story-based instructional animation on the cardiovascular system. Based on cognitive load theory, it was expected that the experimental condition with the pedagogical agent would facilitate students to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant…