Memorisation of Information from Scientific Movies

Abstract

This study deals with students working with a hypermedia that links a bank of chemical movies. Two aspects were examined: (i) the factors (such as surface features) that prevail to the choice of movies by students that use the hypermedia; (ii) the kinds of information that students are able to memorise. The research questions were formulated as (i) How chemical movies are chosen by students who have to answer questions about chemistry? and (ii) How difficult is it to memorise conceptual information from such movies? The films were specifically produced for this research, several of them with two possible narrations: one with a description as perceptible as possible of the pictures of the movie, the other with a maximum of chemical terms. In a first experiment, six pairs of 17-year-old students were given a set of questions to answer with the hypermedia. In a second one, four students were given a series of seven movies to be used, and were questioned after 7 days. The most occurring factors for choosing movies were surface features, but we observed students making their choice after reformulating a question. It also happened that a pair of students chose a movie more than once. Low memorisation seems to occur with movies that display several events, such as chemical reactions. After 7 days, students remembered more pictures of the movie than words of the narration, and from the picture, more icons than animations or photos, and almost no symbols.