The instructional benefits of dynamic visualizations in the acquisition of basketball tactical actions

Abstract

Abstract Recent studies exploring the effects of dynamic visualizations on learning compared with static visualizations have yielded mixed results. Procedural motor learning is one of the few fields in which dynamic representations have shown to be effective. Many of the studies have suggested that this advantage is mainly due to the activation of the “mirror‐neuron system.” This study explores this explanation in physical education domain and analysed the effects of instructional media (video vs. photographs), showing tactical actions in basketball, on learning outcomes (i.e., game understanding and game performance), cognitive load (i.e., mental effort invested and estimated difficulty), and attitudes (i.e., attention, enjoyment, engagement, and challenge) in secondary school students. For all of the indicators, the results show that learning from video was more effective than learning from photographs. These findings have implications for the effective design of instructional media and provide confirmation of the superiority of video for teaching tactical actions involving the entire body.