Animations and multimedia tutorials

In an era of swiftly evolving digital technologies, computer use has become an integral part of our everyday life and computer-based programs designed to instruct, communicate, and gather information are more available than ever before. Typically such programs are designed to include animation and multimedia. These types of treatments provide an environment with words and pictures and have the potential to promote interest and deep learning (Mayer, 2005). Teachers, researchers, and other practitioners have utilized multimedia programs and tutorials to teach and communicate a wide variety of subject matter. The effectiveness of multimedia communication and instruction depends largely upon the use of appropriate design guidelines for instruction, multimedia and user interface. A considerable amount of research over the past 15 to 20 years has focused on developing and testing guidelines in a variety of disciplines and content areas to determine how best to build words and pictures into effective learning environments. Understanding the current research and best practices will help practitioners who use multimedia tutorials to choose appropriate products as well as create them. In this chapter, we discuss the current research on animation and multimedia, provide a series of research-based design principles and highlight some potential factors that moderate learning and interaction in multimedia environments. In addition, we discuss the limitations of the current research and future directions. Finally, we present tools and applications that can be used to create animations and multimedia tutorials.