“The (dynamic) graphics showed the steps in process clearly, for this aspect they were better than text and the teaching during lesson”
“It is good to have animations as a supplementary tool for our learning of complicated process in human body such as the mechanism of filtering wastes in blood by kidney. That process involved many steps, components (ions coming in and out), and flows of fluid.”
“Animation is most needed for mechanisms in physiology that are complicated, for example the ion channel in action potential.”
“Some physiology topics involve too many types of hormones and interactions. This was quite confusing. Presenting them with animation will be a good practice”
“I just partially understood the process of osmolarity change (in the topic of kidney) during lesson but fully understood after I had viewed the animation … Although there were figures in textbook that showed the value changes of osmolarity in kidney, such changes were still difficult to perceive. I just noted they were discrete changes but not trends of changes”
Students also elaborated on what topics had been challenging to them could be good candidates for our future work.
“It would be better to have animations as a supplementary tool for our learning of complicated process in human body such as the mechanism of filtering wastes in blood by kidney. That process involved many steps, components (ions coming in and out), and flows of fluid.”
“Some physiology topics involve too many types of hormones and interactions. This was quite confusing. Presenting them with animation will be a good practice.”
However, although students tend to agree that the graphics in animation looked good, they did not find animations had a strong effect on learning motivation.
“It was certain that no matter how attractive the animation was, the motivation effect would not be strong, especially when compared with examination. Moreover, good personal mood should be a more important factor for learning than the provision of animations”
“I think I was a bit interested in the animation, however, I do not think animation would be a major factor for students’ interest of learning. I think learning interest is intrinsic”
Lastly, students gave a few short suggestions on the improvements of the animations:
“Speed to play the animation: all students thought the playing speed was too slow that it needed more time to view, and they suggested making them faster”
“Add some translations for the difficult terms”
“Some students suggested adding more topics for animations (e.g. brain, gastro-intestinal tract, endocrine system)”
“Add exercises in the animations”
“Animations provided were not informative enough. For example, the explanations of some terms could not be found in animations”
Similar remarks about improvement ideas were also collected in Stage 1 from an open-ended question in the survey. Some of these remarks were:
To develop more of similar learning tools for other topics as well (mentioned in 10 out of the 62 replies (16.2%) in 2008–2009 and 7 out of the 43 replies (16.3%) in 2009–2010);
Some students thought the running was slow such as long loading time, slow speed of narration (mentioned in 13 out of the 39 replies (33.3%) in 2008–2009 and 9 out of the 31 replies (29.0%) in 2009–2010);