Toward the effective use of educational program animations: The roles of student's engagement and topic complexity

► We study the educational impact of constructing, viewing and not using program animations. ► Increasing students' engagement with animations significantly decreases drop-out rate. ► Both uses of animations similarly improve students' knowledge acquisition. ► No evidence to support that engagement improves students' knowledge acquisition. ► Topic complexity seem to be a key factor in the success of the educational use of animations.