Education illustrated

Warrington's animated approach to learning

While the student experience and hands-on learning outside of the classroom have become priorities at Warrington, the college is always looking for innovation inside the classroom to better engage students.

Classroom lectures by faculty will continue to be a pillar of business education. At Warrington’s Teaching & Learning Center, animators are exploring new ways to help students learn and retain pertinent information from each lecture.

“Animation enhances learning for students,” said Meg Leroy, Assistant Dean and Director of the Teaching & Learning Center. “We can show students through movement where they should focus as they’re following a PowerPoint slide, which helps them stay engaged. We can also illustrate a complex idea, or we can show the consequence of a complicated formula. We can help students accurately consume information and see that information applied to a real-world outcome simultaneously.”

Leroy and her team strategized their approach based on research from MIT that showed 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and the human brain can process an image in just 13 milliseconds. They also discovered University of Minnesota research that found human brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than they do text.

The team also partnered with faculty to measure their interest in adding animation to course content. Several faculty were eager to add visual effects and engaging movement to their videos. Dr. Thomas Knight, who redeveloped his UF economics class to better support the needs of dual enrollment students, surveyed all students in his class and found that 81% of them selected shorter, more targeted learning videos as their preferred mode of learning.

“When you combine students’ preference for shorter, more curated videos and the scientifically documented fact that visuals increase learning and retention, adding animation to our courses was a no brainer,” Leroy said.

Warrington’s animation team—consisting of Erica Chow, Dalton Davis and Ayn Duff—started animating lectures for some of the most challenging business classes at the college.

For undergraduate classes, they started with John Banko’s Introduction to Finance class and Michael Schadewald’s Managerial Accounting class. Both courses had 60-minute videos in place to introduce students to what they would learn during the semester. Warrington’s animators highlighted the key content with a two-minute video, loading the video with captivating animation so students could visibly understand what they would learn and why the course’s content would matter to their overall degree plan.

For example, one video showed multiple ways knowledge about accounting would help any manager make multiple business decisions, no matter their chosen industry. The animators also aimed to demystify intimidating topics like accounting and finance, adding in some fun elements and even humor to what can be the toughest classes a business student will take. While students still meet their faculty in the classroom, they can now also watch a curated video with impactful content to prepare and motivate them for the rest of the semester and their future career.

Animators also created short videos for each class explaining how a student can succeed with the day-to-day tasks of taking a tough class. When the Teaching & Learning Center surveyed students, they found that many were nervous about some business courses and did not feel they were prepared for the rigorous study schedule needed to succeed.

To combat their fears, the Teaching & Learning Center met with teaching assistants and course alumni to chart out the best approach to taking rigorous courses. These videos were even voiced by the teaching assistants for the class, providing a more friendly tone for students who struggle to engage with their instructor or ask a question to a large audience.

For graduate classes, animators worked with Adam Munson’s Introduction to Business Statistics, a class taken asynchronously in a student’s first semester of the Online MBA program. Munson’s lectures were already recorded for online students, so animators created additional content that would make learning easier for students.

Animators found places in the lectures where they could create movement or animate the story Munson was sharing to create visuals that make it easier to understand. When Munson taught on probability, the animators showed dice rolling or playing cards flipping and were able to show every detail as Munson spoke about it. It’s an important step in the learning process as students see the example come to life on the screen while also hearing their professor explain it.

“I was so excited to be an early part of this endeavor,” Munson said. “It appears students are more engaged now that they have something to watch rather than just something to look at. The animations have allowed us to continuously support the dialogue with paired visuals that evolve in unison with the discussion. Slides are wonderful and make a great complement to a discussion. But the animations, at their best, actually buttress the discussion synchronously. This provides an advantage because things are evidenced visually and auditorily, doubly reinforcing the concepts.”

The Teaching & Learning Center is already seeing professors reach out for more animation. One professor recently saw students struggling to understand a concept and asked the animation team to help him come up with more engaging ways to present the information that could lead to better student retention.