Towards more Valid Assessment of Learning from Animations

Animated explanations have become an ubiquitous feature of modern educational practice. They provide a distinctive, non-verbal means of presenting information that is particularly appropriate for dynamic subject matter. However, the prevailing approaches used to assess learning from educational animations are almost exclusively verbal. There is thus a clear disconnect between the form of representation students encounter during their learning activity and the very different form of representation used to assess the resulting learning outcomes. This fundamental inconsistency undermines the validity of current assessment approaches and signals the need for a fresh look at how learning from animation is measured. Novel non-verbal measurement tools recently devised for research on animation comprehension processes could provide classroom teachers with a basis for developing more valid ways of assessing learning from animation. This chapter gives examples of these tools that have been found effective with various types of subject matter and involve production as well as recognition tasks. They range from approaches that are very open-ended and unsupported to those that are far more constrained and tightly targeted. Advantages and disadvantages of these approaches are discussed, and consideration given to how they could be optimised for application in practical teaching contexts.