Design Factors for Effective Science Simulations

Plass, J.L., Homer, B.D., Milne, C., Jordan, T., Kalyuga, S., Kim, M., & Lee, H.J. (2009). Design Factors for Effective Science Simulations: Representation of Information. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 1(1), 16–35.

The paper claims that for instructional simulations for learning the way the representation is designed is very important. The hypothesis of the paper is that adding iconic representations to simulations can improve novice learners  cognitive learning outcome. 

This hypothesis is based on the dual coding theory, which explains how the visual information is processed.

The authors claim that the simulations are better learning materials than animations for low prior knowledge learners. Also, user interaction in simulations let the learners manipulate parameters to explore the behavior of the system. This interactivity can also cause high cognitive load if the learner has no prior knowledge, while the learner is trying to understand the dynamic relationship between the variables and representations. Paper suggests iconic representations that could help reduce the cognitive load.

icons: depictive representations: basic 

symbols: descriptive representations: abstract, arbitrary 


Paper suggests that iconic representations would be understood easily by novice users. This addition can reduce the cognitive load.


Learner's characteristics: 
    prior knowledge: organized knowledge structures from long term memory (schemas), can reduce working memory limitations by chunking


 -learners' prior knowledge have to be considered for designing representations type
 -learners with low prior knowledge understand better when there are iconic  representations