There’s power in a picture. Ever since cavemen started drawing shapes and figures on cave walls for storytelling, human beings realized how they could use images to show what’s on their minds. Later on, they figured out how to use the images to show a movement, which is the root of today’s animations and motion pictures.
Now, in the modern day, animation is not just limited to entertainment. In the field of e-learning, animations are like creative lightning strikes that turn ideas that aren’t moving into stories that are. They can completely change how students interact with your material.
Let’s see how.
Three Ways to Use Animation in E-Learning
Based on your educational purpose, you can use animation in three ways to add more value to the information and get the most out of the e-learning experience.
To Provide Direction
Here, the instructor uses animation in e-learning to direct the learner’s gaze to a certain part of the screen. In any situation, like a classroom, people can easily get distracted by their surroundings or just drown in their thoughts. Just like a cat and a laser, you can use animation to keep their eyes on the movement.
All it takes is just an eye-catching graphic moving or pointing to a specific part of the screen. You should subtly do this, like drawing attention to a video or adding a little movement to an illustration.
To Make a Transition
Adding movements between slides isn’t the only job of animation. This can be more annoying and confusing than an ordinary transition. Just a few milliseconds to think about the shift is enough for the learner to lose their train of thought.
While learning online, animation helps students find their way around when the content changes. They won’t have to think as hard about the change if the shift is effortless and subtle. It will also save them both energy and time. They can figure out where they are and where they need to go.
To Simplify the Message
In many cases, people can’t only use conventional verbal communication to get their message across. For instance, when you visit a car dealership website, reading all the specifications without images takes a lot of energy and brain power. But, when you see a clear image of a car, it’s much easier to understand the details and make a decision.
By activating the learner’s visualization, you can use animation to break down a complicated idea into smaller pieces that are easy for everyone to understand. So, it’s not an exaggeration to say that incorporating pictures and visuals can boost learning by 400%.
How Animation Can Improve E-Learning
If you’re thinking of using animation in the education process, it’s important to understand the impact that it can have on your target audience. You can start with these benefits.
It Turns the Complicated into Simple
There’s no denying that sometimes, we have to teach subjects that are too complicated or abstract for the brain. In most cases, they are full of dry, technical terms that are not interesting to the average person and can easily make them bored and lose interest. This is where you can use animation.
A lot of students have trouble understanding complicated topics, but teachers can easily describe or explain them in animated learning videos. When experienced teachers find it hard to explain tough subjects to their students, they often use video simulations to make the subjects easier to understand.
Draws the Learner in
Learning isn’t a one-sided process, at least not if you want real results. You need to attract the learner, and animation can use different learning styles to engage the learner in the visuals and encourage them to participate in the process. You can use animation for both teaching and evaluating students.
There are multiple ways you can use animation to serve this purpose. For example, using gamification, you can incorporate animated visuals to design the assessment while making the whole experience feel like a game.
Instead of stressing out about the exam, the learner eagerly anticipates the game-like experience and puts more energy into winning.
Makes Learning Interactive
Making e-learning more interactive is one of the best things about animation. Students can decide how fast they want to learn with animation. They are free to stop, play, restart, and even change the speed of animated clips.
Using animation in any form allows you to break down the teaching material into small, digestible nuggets. Plus, by packaging the information into several bundles, it’s easier for students to access the files from anywhere, using any device, like their smartphones. What’s even better is that they don’t have to learn the whole thing in one sitting.
Improves Retention
Animation-based learning can help students remember things better and make complicated information easier to understand. As you may already know, animations are great ways to learn through sound and sight. The brain is very good at processing visual information. Psychological studies also show that people tend to understand and remember pictures better than words. Having both oral and visual learning materials is vital for retention.
Don’t forget that everyone learns in their own way. Some people learn best by doing, others by reading, and still others by seeing images. Animation can include every one of these modalities, which means that every type of learner can use animation.
Sets the Tone
In e-learning, animation can be a good way to set the tone for a lesson. Animation can evoke a range of feelings that motivate and interest students as both a visual and auditory medium. You can use it to connect with students’ feelings, calm them down, or motivate them to do better in their studies. Younger people are more receptive to funny animations, while corporate employees may respond more to a simple infographic demonstration.
Adult students are more into learning experiences with simple background music and clear, short conversations. Hectic audio, distracting, or poor is annoying and distracting. Animated graphics give an eLearning course a unique mood, adding personality to a simple text on a screen and customizing the content to the specific audience.
Stimulates Imagination
Animation lets students watch videos that take them to a whole new world. By watching animation, students can get a taste of ideas that are normally hard to imagine. Learners can use their imaginations when they use a range of colors and shapes. They learn to make up abstract pictures in their heads. Also, learners improve their lively imaginations as they explore different options through visual animation.
Helps with Lab Courses
Using tools like virtual reality (VR), and animation in the classroom helps students understand abstract ideas. Together, animation and VR make it easier to learn complicated ideas in ways that are hard to do in real life. For example, some science projects can be too dangerous in real life, but they are important for the learning process. Animation in the classroom lets students try out things that would be risky otherwise.
It’s Affordable & Reusable
Some people say that animated pictures cost a lot of money. Actually, it saves time and money. It’s not hard to make an impressive 2D or 3D cartoon movie on a budget. The cool thing about it is that you make them once and use them over and over again for a long time.
Plus, students can watch them whenever they like. Long-term, it lowers the cost of running movies every month or year. This can easily help you get a better ROI out of the education project.
How to Use Animation to Get More Out of Learning
So now, you understand how animation can make the education process easier for the instructor and the learner. Of course, you can’t just dive head-first into this process. You need to consider a few pointers to optimize the animation for maximum learning.
The Animation Should Match Your Purpose
You can make the lesson simple and compelling with tunes, sound effects, images, and voice-overs. You should only use animations that are related to the e-learning material. Try to make the images show what the topic is about. For example, if you are teaching history and discussing World War II, you should make the class feel like the situation is critical and emotional so the topic can become more tangible for them.
To do that, you need to learn a lot about your audience and adapt the elements to their style. It helps you come up with a better way to teach your students. For example, if you work with kids, you need to use relatable sounds and images.
Work on the Script & the Audio
An actor will read from the script to add more detail and a human touch. If you’re writing about something specific, you should also keep it simple and clear. You can have multiple actors and voices in a narrative situation.
Having a soundtrack that goes with the visuals can make the material more memorable. Because animation uses both our eyes and ears, it keeps our brains more active than just talking. With background music and voiceover, it’s easier for the learner to stay focused. You should also have subtitles to cover people from different languages or those with disabilities.
Use Fitting Graphics
It can be hard to learn if the graphics or motions aren’t right, are too loud, or physically distracting. The most important thing about your show is the lesson itself, not showcasing your skills in graphics. That’s why subtle strategies like moving in and out the videos can keep students excited while still allowing them to concentrate.
Too much movement, color, or noise can make it harder to focus. This makes it hard for them to concentrate on the most important points. When learning about something that needs more focus and critical thought, you can’t use jarring pictures. When it comes to dry topics, like finance or business, you can use colors and movement to breathe life into the topic.
Overall, your job is to make sure that the learners get the best education possible. You can use the new tools to improve your lessons and make them more relevant to the target audience. One of the best and most popular tools is using animation.
Conclusion
Times have changed and it doesn’t make sense to expect great results from a traditional, strict formal education. Nowadays, you need to engage the learner and let them participate and interact with the material. Animation is one great way to do this.
Of course, there’s an art and a science in making and optimizing animation for education. Whether you’re a producer or an investor, it’s better to partner with a third-party expert team like Dream Farm Studios that has an excellent track record in this field. Feel free to contact us and get a quote right now!