There are some in-between techniques which might also be good to test, such as showing all the text but in a lighter color and “undimming” it and a similar idea of displaying all the text at once in a dark color but changing its color slightly as you focus on a point (I have tips of these techniques on my site.) By now, we’ve come up with enough additional research ideas for the rest of the authors’ careers!

One more point I’d like to make is that how much people learn isn’t always the main goal. In a sales presentation, for example, the goal is how much people buy, and that might or might not vary along with how much people learn. Academic research isn’t always fully applicable in the business world. Something more to test!
Ellen

Thanks for your consistently excellent posts.

I’m finding it interesting to watch people’s reaction to this research, which actually seems to make a lot of sense to me. Let me explain.

We humans are very good at detecting changes, especially movement, in our visual field. As I understand it the theory is that this skill helped us spot tigers in the jungle way back when. In modern times, it’s why a television that’s on in a bar so easily distracts us from our converation with our date.

When we notice such movement, it seems natural that we’re then inclined to process it, to work out what it is we are looking at. In the digital certificate example in the screencast above, it certainly took me a good few seconds to work out what this thing was that was moving into the screen.

Because we are physically unable to do two tasks simultaneously*, we simply cannot listen to the narration and unpick the animation at the same time. Hence this learning opportunity is compromised.

I would suggest that for the best outcome, any time something new is brought onto the screen, the viewer is given time to see and uncode it, without any other information being directed at their senses (e.g. verbally).

Thanks again,
Jessica

* While I don’t have a reference for this at hand, I am fairly confident that I have seen research from psychology that verifies that at best we can switch very quickly between two tasks, but cannot do them at /exactly/ the same time.

For the animated slides, I found myself disengaging, waiting for the slide to “do something” that made it all make sense. Like watching TV rather than reading a book.