Understanding photosynthesis videos: Students’ visual-spatial ability and cognitive activities in senior high school

In studying the photosynthesis process, which is complex and abstract, the use of videos is one alternative to reduce students’ cognitive load in processing information. When studying videos (audio-visual media), students surely involve complex cognitive activities. Moreover, students’ visual-spatial ability also influences the variation of their cognitive activities. This study was a descriptive one which includes ten senior high school students at Bandung. The students were asked to think aloud while studying photosynthesis video. Then, their visual-spatial ability was measured by mental rotation and folding paper tests. The result showed that there were five kinds of cognitive activities when students studied videos. Those were activating prior knowledge, identifying images, interpreting symbols, hypothesizing, and inferring. Students with high visual-spatial ability generally have five variations of cognitive activities, while students with low one only have two variations of those. This result gives itemized pieces of information which can be used to improve instructional learning, especially in understanding videos on different levels of visual-spatial ability.