Creating visual explanations improves learning

Area of Science:

• STEM Education
• Cognitive Science
• Learning Sciences

Background:

• Complex scientific concepts are challenging for students, especially those outside their direct experience.
• Traditional instruction often relies on verbal explanations, despite the potential of visualizations.
• Students typically create verbal rather than visual explanations of scientific phenomena.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the learning benefits of creating visual versus verbal explanations in STEM domains.
• To investigate how explanation modality impacts understanding of mechanical and chemical systems.
• To determine if visual explanations offer advantages over verbal ones for student learning.

Main Methods:

• Participants created either visual or verbal explanations for a mechanical system (bicycle pump) and a chemical system (bonding).
• Explanations were analyzed for content accuracy and completeness.
• Student learning was assessed using a post-test measuring understanding.

Main Results:

• Creating visual explanations improved understanding for mechanical systems, especially for students with low spatial ability.
• For chemical systems, both visual and verbal explanations enhanced learning.
• Visual explanations were generally superior, benefiting students across all spatial ability levels and often including critical, unseen features.

Conclusions:

• Learner-generated visual explanations are a powerful tool for improving comprehension in STEM.
• The effectiveness of visual explanations stems from their ability to reveal crucial details and support inference.
• The benefits of visual explanations are likely generalizable to other disciplines requiring visualization, such as history and archaeology.