1. The research question
1.1 Introduction to the research question
1.2 The research question
1.3 Background to the research question
1.4 The research report
1.1 Introduction to the research question
From my own experience in making explanatory animations, I have found that the person who benefits the most from this process is actually the author. This realisation provided a rationale for the Storyboard project to involve primary school students authoring their own explanatory animations. The wealth of digital data generated by this process provides sufficient evidence to document the children's own learning and their emerging patterns of conceptual consolidation. My claim here is that explanatory animations can be cognitive models. "Modelling provides rich research opportunities in the effects of knowledge representation on conceptual change." (Jonassen 2008:690)
1.2 The research question
The research question which drives this study is:
In what ways can storyboarding and explanatory animation creation enable primary school students to articulate and consolidate their conceptual understanding?
This research project is called Storyboard. The title reflects my belief that although technology has made massive advances in the last 30 years, the biggest innovation predates this which is the screen itself. When Walt Disney first used the word “Storyboard” in the 1930s he was describing a basic technique which organised and depicted a logical framework for the design process. The screen is here to stay so my Storyboard title acknowledges the prevalence of the screen and visual literacy in our society. Logic and order can be used as the building blocks for constructing knowledge in ways which are highly presentable.
1.3 Background to the research question
Positioning students as authors of explanatory animations is like deputising them to become teachers of their chosen topics. The concept of learning by teaching has been around for thousands of years. “Learning by doing' is an old enough idea, but until recently the narrowness of range of the possible doings severely restricted the implementation of the idea. The educational vocation of the new technology is to remove these restrictions.” (Papert 1991:22)
A guiding principle in the Storyboard methodology is that “you don't really understand something until you can teach it.” Good teaching is reflective and therefore diagnostic so I would encourage teachers to ask their students to "show me that you understand." "The learning process itself needs to be emphasised rather than the use of a specific technology since technologies are rapidly changing and evolving". (Lynch & Fleming 2007:3). This is why I chose "Storyboard" as a thesis title as it is a pre-computer term which emphasises logic in order.
The concept of learning by teaching is particularly effective when using multimedia as "people learn best when they need to explain something to others or represent complex information to people who do not yet know this information." (Harel 1991:461) The Storyboard students go beyond the mere presentation of their animations. Throughout the whole authoring process they are learning and applying pedagogical principles to enhance the clarity and effectiveness of their teaching.
Educators have long since realised the potential of technology to assist in the process of learning. "The computer stands betwixt and between the world of formal systems and physical things; it has the ability to make the abstract concrete.” (Turkle & Papert 1991:162) The challenge is not for teachers to keep up with every technological fad but rather to focus on their primary role of helping students construct knowledge through the critical interpretation of ideas.
The process of designing and making an explanatory animation is not a common activity for students, especially primary school students. ”Much of the more recent research into learning with animation has been carried out via laboratory experiments involving university students. In contrast, there have been relatively few experimental studies investigating the effect of animated visuals with primary or secondary students.” (Betrancourt & Chassot 2008:145) There are even wider gaps is the research literature for the creation of explanatory animations authored by students. “Extant literature contains many studies of the efficacy of animations and other kinds of representation created by expert teachers and researchers. However, studies on the characteristics and efficacy of student-created representations are much less numerous.” (Hubscher-Younger & Narayanan 2008:237) My interest in student-created representation began shortly after completing my Master's thesis "Animating Best Practice" when I realised that the person who had learnt the most from the animations was in fact the author (i.e. me). This led me to pursue further research where students could undertake the same task of creating explanatory animations.
Many animation activities used in Australian schools involve specific software packages such as Kahootz or Stop Motion Pro. Kahootz is useful for generating narrative (Chandler, O’Brien & Unsworth 2010:35) but the animation “environments” are predetermined and therefore quite limited as a representational medium. Claymation software such as Stop Motion Pro and Monkey Jam utilise web cams to capture imagery. By photographing reality they are limited to what can be physically constructed. (Claymation software can also be used to capture a series of illustrations which is not as limiting as using actual objects but Claymation by definition is not used in this manner).
It was not my intention to conduct a survey of research into the use of animation in schools but rather to design a specific study on how conceptual consolidation is enhanced through designing and making explanatory animations. The difference between designing and making in this context is that the design process could finish with a well conceived storyboard without the final step of actually recording the voice-over script, rendering the imagery and then synchronising both elements into a final video artefact.
The Storyboard project uses imagery which the children create in an entirely digital medium, in this case Microsoft PowerPoint. The various slides which the children design are “saved as” image files which are then combined using video editing software and rendered as stand-alone video files.
Mayer’s multimedia theory (2001, 2009) has some relevance to the Storyboard project but it is still quite different in two distinct areas:
1.4 The research report
This research report is presented in its native digital format so that the reader can interact with the media. “How do we take up the potential of new data sources and their analytic representations? These issues are critical to understanding how we might craft original questions but also how we might develop the textual forms of ‘writing up’ research.” (Moss 2008:232)
“Perhaps the biggest obstacle to academic hypermedia authoring is likely to be academic institutions. Academic credit is still based on publishing conventionally-authored monographs with major publishers or articles in peer-reviewed journals. Hypermedia is a move away from the formal structures of the academic article or book with chapters.” (Dicks et al 2005:67) This thesis seeks to tread cautiously within the hypertext environment by retaining formal academic structures and chapters and (when completed) will still comply with the required word count. The digital nature of the thesis provides additional functionality and reflects my desire to preserve the data without flattening out the richness therein. Because the children’s work is digital it can be best accessed in this medium.