Textbook companies are increasingly including larger numbers of animations as complementary resources for students and teachers. Are all animations useful as teaching tools? The answer is no. Animations can be useful for communicating dynamic events and processes but only when specific rules are followed. The authors review the important…

Animated graphics are extensively used in multimedia instructions explaining how natural or artificial dynamic systems work. As animation directly depicts spatial changes over time, it is legitimate to believe that animated graphics will improve comprehension over static graphics. However, the research failed to find clear evidence in favour of…

Many educators distribute either complete or incomplete handouts so students can follow along with their lectures. This research examines a teaching system that combines computer-generated graphics presentations and detailed outline handouts with blanks added. An experiment found that this system produced significantly higher short-term recall of…

Describes study of children in grades one, three, and five that examined their active processing and short term memory (STM) of color, contour, and interior pattern of shapes found in computer digitized pictures. Age-related differences are examined, and the role of processing visual information in the learning process is discussed. (12…

This exploratory study of the effects of the new visual communications media imagery (e.g., video games, digital television, and computer graphics) on the visual perception process is designed to provide a theoretical framework for research, introduce appropriate research instruments for such study, and experiment with the application of biometric…