Evaluating the impact of interactive cinema in audiovisual literacy and education: An eye-tracking study

Abstract

The present paper explores the use of interactive cinema in education from the perspective of young students’ responsiveness. With the use of an eye-tracker, gaze data was collected from students aged between 10-13 years who watched a short film extract, enhanced with a number of interactive elements or “hotspots” that appeared during playback. During the experiment, the eye-tracker collected data on the behavioral patterns of student participants with regard to their willingness to access the interactive elements on screen, the time they devoted to reading them, possible optimal positions of those elements, etc., also studied in relation to demographic information concerning age group, area of living, and gender of the participants. The aim of the experiment was to assess students’ responses in the context of exploring the prospects for using interactive cinema in education in order to teach elements of audiovisual literacy as well as any other cross-curricular content.