Abstract:
Whiteboard animations are increasingly used in education despite little evidence of their efficacy. In this study, we measured the impact of whiteboard animations and other common instructional formats on learning outcomes, experience, and motivation. We recruited participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N=568; 326 females). Participants were randomly assigned to view online lessons about popular topics in social science from wellestablished scholars in one of five common instructional formats: whiteboard animation, electronic slideshow, stage lecture, audio, and text. Results showed a benefit of whiteboard animations in terms of learning and subjective experiences of enjoyment and engagement.
