JBC Vol. 35, No. 1 2009 www.jbiocommunication.org E3 Effectiveness of Timeline Pacing as a Post-production Cueing Strategy in an Educational Three-Dimensional Animation for Undergraduate Medical Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial Kari L. Visscher, Nicholas Woolridge, Jodie Jenkinson, and Kevin C. Kain The objectives of this study were to investigate the quantity and quality of undergraduate medical students’ learning from a three-dimensional animation, and to evaluate whether timeline pacing used as a post-production cueing strategy can improve the educational effectiveness of the animation. First- and second-year undergraduate medical students (n = 89) at the University of Toronto evaluated a three-dimensional animation depicting the interaction of Plasmodium falciparum malaria with HIV-1 within the placenta. The students were assigned by means of permuted block randomization to view the animation either with timeline pacing (edited version) or without (unedited version). The double-blinded evaluation consisted of the students’ completion of a randomized computer generated pre- and post-test and a feedback form. To ensure that all participants had similar baseline knowledge of the subject, the results of participants who scored 30% or above on the pre-test (n = 7) were omitted. Mean test scores for students in both groups improved after they watched the animation only once (unedited version: t 39 = 23.0, p ≤ 0.001; edited version: t 41 = 24.7, p ≤ 0.001). However, no signiicant difference in learning was detected between the two versions of the animation (t 80 = 0.762, p ≤ 0.230). For both groups, the mean difference between scores for pre-and post-testing of recall questions was signiicantly higher than that for testing the application questions (unedited version: t 39 = 8.23, p ≤ 0.001; edited version: t 41 = 9.09, p ≤ 0.001). A complex three-dimensional animation aided irst- and second-year undergraduate medical students’ learning, particularly learning factual knowledge. Timeline pacing did not have an impact on the learning outcome. Introduction Over the past decade, the use of three-dimensional (3D) animations in higher learning has been on the increase (Azer 2007; Mayer and Moreno 2002), and, like most educational material, the effectiveness of these teaching aids depends heavily on the quality of their design (Lowe 2004). Since animations have the potential to distract students from the intended message (Choules 2007), designers need to actively manipulate the way content is presented to guide students to relevant information. This manipulation, or cueing of content, although useful in all types of instruction, is particularly important to the design of instructional 3D animations because of their linear, often non- interactive nature, which makes controlling the rate of learning in classroom settings dificult. Current types of successful cueing techniques used by animation designers include narration (Mayer and Anderson 1991, 1992); overt changes in the characteristics of the focal objects such as changes in form (transformation), position (translation), and inclusion (transition) (Lowe 2003; Rensink 2000); and surface structure such as colour, texture, and level of detail (Weiss et al. 2002; Wilson-Pauwels 1997). Studies (Bolls and Muehling 2003; Lang et al. 2000, 2003) evaluating the effects of the design of television news and commercials on viewers’ attention and comprehension suggest that the use of post-production cues such as pacing are effective. In particular, this research (Bolls and Muehling 2003; Lang et al. 1999, 2000, 2003) looked at altering pace, which is the speed at which visual information is presented to the viewer for cognitive processing. From this research, Potter and Lang (1999, 2001) devised a set of seven post-production guidelines to make stories easier to understand. One of these guidelines suggests the use of slow-to-moderate pacing, or timeline pacing, for complex stories. Timeline pacing, the speed at which the linear representation, or timeline, of a ilm or animation is viewed, is a standard post-production editing technique used in cinematic narrative, particularly in the action-adventure genre (Peebles 2004). However, the effectiveness of timeline pacing in other dynamic media such as in instructional animation has not been investigated. For this study, a complex 3D animation was used to investigate the quantity and quality of undergraduate medical students’ learning from 3D animation, and to evaluate whether timeline pacing used as a post-production cueing strategy could improve