My colleague Chopeta Lyons and I are just finishing up the second edition of Graphics for Learning. One of our goals was to update the research on visuals. The biggest single category of new research turned out to be evidence on animations. Here’s the bottom line:
1) To teach how things work – what I call process knowledge a series of still visuals is as good or better than animations
2) To demonstration how to perform tasks involving motion – animations are better than stills
3) Limited evidence on how to demonstrate social skills favors video or animation over text narratives. I’d love to see a comparison of still visuals versus video versus animation.
How do you use still versus dynamic visuals in your training products?
For more information on Visuals, see my forthcoming book, Graphics for Learning – 2nd Edition – out in Fall 2010