Concept Animation - a potential instructional scaffolding

Concept animation – the graphical array of pictures accompanied by text as speech balloons, can help to improve learner’s comprehension from basic to advanced levels concepts. When the process of concept comprehension is not facilitated, the learner may come in a transitional state of misperception and understanding, that can restrain their learning to a surface approach. The basic science concepts learned at the inception of a Health Sciences program play a vital role towards the development of higher-order thinking and problem-solving aptitude in the subsequent years. Hence, it is important to facilitate meaningful learning of core concepts and principles in difficult basic science disciplines, like Pharmacology. This work reports our experiences of employing concept animations as a ‘visual aid’ instructional strategy to simplify pharmacology concepts to undergraduate Optometry students. The fundamental ideas of drug pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and side effects were transformed into concept animations. The effects of these concept animations are explained by using Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development, Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning and cognitive load theory.