Usability evaluation of 3-D visualisations augmented by cartoons for teaching solids and crystal structures in chemical engineering
Main Article Content
Abstract
In chemical engineering, undergraduate students often have to face the highly demanding process of understanding concepts from the microscopic level (e.g., ionic crystals such as zinc sulphide or covalent lattice crystals diamond, graphite, graphene etc.) and then explain with certain physical–chemical properties their macroscopic behaviour. Therefore, the main idea was to construct a specifically designed educational material that focusses on the benefits of viewing visualisations to enhance students’ conceptual understanding of solids and crystal structures augmented by cartoons, and evaluate its usability. The interactive ‘cartoons’ agents were developed from scratch, giving them freedom of movement and realism at the same time. A research was conducted in the School of Chemical Engineering in Greece (National Technical University of Athens), evaluated the usability of the digital material and the contribution of the 3-D visualisations and the cartoons agents in the understanding of such high-cognitive load concepts.
Keywords: Cartoons, 3-D visualisations, crystal structures, chemical engineering.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).