To Sonify or Not to Sonify? Educator Perceptions of Auditory Display in Interactive Simulations

With the growing presence of auditory display in popular learning tools, it is beneficial to researchers to consider not only the perceptions of the students who use the tools, but the educators who include the tools in their curriculum. We surveyed over 4000 educators to investigate educator perceptions and preferences across four interactive physics simulations for the presence and qualities of non-speech auditory display, as well as surveying users’ self-rated musical sophistication as potentially predictive of auditory display preference. We find that the majority of teachers preferred the simulations with auditory display and consistently rated aspects of the experience using simulations with sound positively over the without-sound variants. We also identify simulation design features that align with trends in educator ratings. We did not find the measured musical sophistication to be a predictor of auditory display preference.