The Effectiveness of Animated Video and Written Text Resources for Learning Microeconomics: A Laboratory Experiment

Students’ diverse learning modes render the need to develop various learning materials for effective learning. Existing literature has shown the increasing use of animated videos to complement classroom teaching. To justify the use of videos for teaching, the impact of learning should be comparatively as effective as that of traditional learning materials. While there are studies of students’ perception on effectiveness of animated videos in existing literature, relatively little is reported on videos development and comparison to traditional written text in terms of their impact on learning outcomes. In response to this, our study describes the design of learning materials and a laboratory experiment which randomly assign business and non-business students to either a video or a text group to collect students’ perception. We design a pre- and post-test to each group to test the learning outcomes of both types of learning materials for comparison. We use both quantitative and qualitative questions to assess students’ experience of learning and collect comments for further development of the learning materials. The analysis showed that students perceived both types of materials as comparable and they regarded both positively. Both groups showed improvement between pre- and post-test, but the change in scores was insignificantly different across groups. These suggested that video is an effective alternative to text materials. The paper shares our experience of developing learning materials and designing a laboratory experiment with academics interested in using different learning materials for teaching microeconomics. The results support videos as equally effective learning materials as written text and provide directions for further improving existing learning materials.