An animation-based approach to clarify the meanings of questions in a technology-enhanced science learning environment preference questinnaire

Abstract

Based on our previous work on investigating students’ preferences towards science learning environments, we found that students encountered great difficulties in understanding the meaning of questions which described how educational technologies would be used in a classroom setting. Therefore, this study used animations as visual aids to assist students in clarifying the meanings of questions in a technology-enhanced science learning environment preference questionnaire. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of animation-based items on students’ responses and its association with students’ visual images. The results revealed that students’ responses to the Animation-Based Questionnaire (ABQ) were significantly different from their responses to the Text-Based Questionnaire (TBQ). Moreover, we found that the vividness of students’ visual images is a significant predictor in explaining the students’ response changes between ABQ and TBQ (p = .005). It suggests that the clearer the students’ visual images stimulated from the description of a survey question in TBQ, the more likely the students will change their responses more prominently to that question on ABQ. This finding confirms that students interpret a survey question not only based the verbal representations they form from the question descriptions but also visual images. The questionnaire design should more cautiously take this individual difference into account