USING EYE TRACKING TO EXPLORE HOW THE SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT OF TEXT AND FIGURES INFLUENCES GEOLOGY LEARNING

Learning college-level geology usually requires students to combine visual information with written text, and in many Introductory Geology classes, textbooks are the primary source of content information. It is, therefore, important to understand the impact of the spatial arrangement of text and figures on students’ learning. Eye tracking provides a way to explore and document where students focus their gaze and how they integrate information from the text and pictures. Eye tracking students while they learn geology from textbook-style learning materials with varied spatial arrangement of the text and figure can provide insight about learning behaviors and lead to the design of instruction materials that support the cognitive processes of the learner.

Undergraduate students from a large Introductory Geology lecture class were randomly assigned to one of three groups that differed based on the spatial arrangement of the text and figure of the intervention materials. All groups took a pre test, were eye tracked while learning geology content from textbook-style learning materials, and took a post test. Group 1 was exposed to learning materials in which the text and figure were integrated. Group 2 was exposed to learning materials that were modeled after a traditional textbook in that the text and figure were spatially separated. The learning materials provided to Group 3 exhibited formatting elements of groups 1 and 2, serving as an intermediate format of the two end-member groups.

The group that was exposed to the integrated format improved significantly more from the pre test to the post test than did the group that was exposed to the traditional textbook-style materials. Additionally, the group that received the integrated format and the group with the intermediate format spent significantly more time looking at the figure than did the group exposed to the traditional textbook format. Placing the figure in the middle of the page largely impacts the duration and frequency with which participants examine the figure. These results provide implications for the design of instructional material.