Searching User-Controllable Animations During Learning

Complex animated information poses challenges for learners with respect to spatial and temporal search. Although user control of animations is widely regarded as a way to ameliorate these challenges, its potential often remains unfulfilled for learners who are novices in the depicted domain. Efforts to improve the effectiveness of user controllable animations should be based on a sound understanding of why such learners fail to extract crucial task relevant information. This chapter gives an account of an approach of fine-grained investigation of how learners interrogate animations. Three complementary sets of synchronized video recordings providing tight integration of different perspectives on a learner’s activity are employed. These records permit detailed analysis of task performance on the basis of closely coordinated quantitative and qualitative data sets. Learners’ concurrent verbalizations are supplemented by timely stimulated retrospective accounts. Results obtained suggest that domain novices rely on perceptually based interrogation strategies and set task-inappropriate goals.