Comparing Short‐ and Long‐Term Learning Effects Between Stereoscopic and Two‐Dimensional Film at a Planetarium

Abstract

Science centers such as museums and planetariums have used stereoscopic ("three-dimensional") films to draw interest from and educate their visitors for decades. Despite the fact that most adults who are finished with their formal education get their science knowledge from such free-choice learning settings very little is known about the effect of stereoscopic film presentation on their science learning. We explored this issue by designing a quasi-experimental field trial with a short film about the shape of the Milky Way galaxy. The film was produced based on a set of stereoscopic design principles derived from spatial cognition and cognitive load literature with the goal of lowering the audience's extraneous cognitive load. The film was randomly shown in either two-dimensional (2D) or stereoscopic format to 498 adults who visited a large, urban planetarium. To investigate the extent of audience's change related to galaxy-related spatial concepts, an identical set of questions was asked on iPads before and after the film was shown. A delayed posttest was given to 123 of those adults approximately 6 months later. Test performances were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of covariances (ANCOVAs) with demographic and spatial visualization ability measures as covariates. Results show identical short-term learning gains in both the 2D and stereoscopic groups.

The Effect of Stereoscopic Three-Dimensional Images on Vocabulary Learning

“…This study is aligned with the studies that found no overall difference in the effectiveness of the two viewing formats (Cid & Lopez, 2010;Price, Lee, & Malatesta, 2014;Price et al, 2015;Wuerzburger, 2017). Meanwhile, those studies differed from this one.…”

“Can There be a Full Moon at Daytime?” Young Students Making Sense of Illustrations of the Lunar Phases

“…This is one example that shows that linking Earth‐based observations with sophisticated models of a space‐based perspective supports understanding. Similar results were obtained by Price, Lee, Subbarao, Kasal, and Aguilera () in a study where a three‐dimensional film, in their case about galaxy‐related concepts, was shown to adults.…”

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“…research (AER) community to further investigate the connection between success in learning astronomy and extrapolating three dimensionality [76,78,90,[93][94][95]. Here, virtual and augmented reality, and planetaria, are found to offer new possibilities for approaching this [96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103]. However, such resources must be used with considerations; Tversky et al [104] say, "Like all good things, animation must be used with care" (p. 258).…”