Budgetary Practices and Performance of Private Educational Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria

This study investigated budgetary control: A key enabler of performance of private educational institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design; both primary and secondary method of data collection were employed to obtain relevant data for analysis. The instrument of data collection was the questionnaire. The study population comprised the163 registered private secondary schools operating in Rivers State as enlisted in the Manual, Rivers State Ministry of Education (2017). A total of 116 copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the study respondents. However, only 91 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and used in the analysis. The data was analyzed using the Pearson product movement correlation statistics through the aid of statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 22.0.The results of the finding reveals that that there is a strong and positive relationship between budgetary practices and performance of private educational institutions in Rivers State. The study further concludes that budgetary practices and policies are pivotal for achieving high performance among private educational institutions in Rivers State. It therefore recommends that schools’ proprietors and principals should adopt budgetary practices to enhance their institutions performance. Keywords: Budgetary Practice, Budgetary Control, Performance, Liquidity, Return on Assets. DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-18-04 Publication date: September 30 th 2020

1.Introduction
The importance of private business ownership in Nigeria cannot be over emphasized and cannot be anytime more important than now. This is due to the current economic disposition which has compelled most legitimate people to seek legitimate ways of earning a living and impact the country positively. Lawal and Wahab (2011) identifies private educational institutions as major economic player with direct impact on revenue generation and multiplier effects on education, transportation, tourism among other sectors in the country.According to Manuel (2000) as adopted in Lawal and Wahab (2011), the success of private educational operation at any level, lies greatly on the adoption and implementation of budgetary control by the schools' administrators.
Most business firms recognize the need to have a developed and comprehensive budgetary system in order to minimize budget variances, costs and maximize efficiency (Alesina & Perotti, 1996). Alesina and Perotti, (1996) advance that the process of managing is facilitated when management charts its future course of certain objectives in advance and takes decision in a professional manner, utilizing the Individual and group efforts in a coordinated rational manner. One systematic approach for attaining effective management performance is budgeting. Budgets are monetary expressions of target to be accomplished in a given year by an individual, organization or nation. It is a deliberate attempt to achieve superior targets over time with available and expected resources. Such targets are influenced by the experiences of the past and expectation of the future (Atkinson, Banker Kaplan & Young, 2001;Carr, 2000).
Basically, an effective budgetary practice enables management more effectively to plan, coordinate, control and evaluates its activities. It is a device intended to provide greater effectiveness in achieving organizational efficiency (Chenhall &Langfield, 1998). Financial Management in organizations, firms and institutions had been a sensitive issue over the years. This is because the government and the public are interested on how funds are planned, controlled, and applied for specific assignment to achieve specific objectives. In educational institutions, the realization of desired educational goals and objectives depend largely on the efficient planning and management of school funds by the school administrators. Amuseghan (2010) lamented negative standpoint of Nigeria where little resources available are not effectively managed in the schools. One thing is to raise fund, but the other is to ensure that the fund raised is well utilized by the school mangers. In response to this fact, Ogbonnaya (2000) emphasized that resources are scarce and optimal utilization of the available resources is expedient. However, to ensure judicious application of funds and accountability, school administrators (principals) plan and prepare budget for their schools. Budgeting according to Olufidipe (2003) is a process of preparing and using budgets to achieve management objectives. Ihedioha (2003) stated that budgeting is a systematic and formalized approach for stating and communicating the firm's expectations and accomplishing the planning, coordinating and controlling responsibilities of management in such a way as to minimize the use of given resources to achieve maximum results. The broad objective of this study is to ascertain the impact of corporate budgetary practices on performance of private educational institutions in Rivers State.
Research Journal of Finance and Accounting www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1697 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2847 (Online) Vol.11, No.18, 2020 2. Literature Review Ekwelem (1990) carried out a study on budget and budgetary control in performance of academic libraries in the context of University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The study focused on some of the faults in the budget and budgetary control process as employed in the University of Nigeria Nsukka Library system. Descriptive survey research design was adopted. The questionnaire was used to collect data while regression analysis was used to measure the level of significance between the hypothesized variables and it was found that there is a statistically significant relationship between budgetary control and performance of academic libraries in Nigeria University, Nsukka. The study further revealed that budgetary control is an essential tool for setting standards towards actual accomplishment as against set objectives in the organization. Similarly, Obayi (1996) investigated budgeting in secondary schools in Enugu South Local Government Area (L.G.A). The researcher used survey design. They adopted questionnaire as the instrument for data collection . The study revealed that tuition fees, caution fees, equipment fees, Parent/Teachers Association (PTA) levies and examination fees were major sources of revenue for private business secondary schools while school business, donations and borrowing were only minor sources, no revenue was derived from government. The result made it clear that incremental budgeting is the most popular budgeting techniques used in the private secondary school. Budgeting was the main bases.
Ogbonnaya (2001) conducted a research on budgetary practices of secondary school principals in Enugu Education Zone. The descriptive survey research design was adopted to study a population of eighty one (81) principals and one hundred and two (102) bursars. Mean scores were used to answer the research questions and ztest statistics was used to test the hypotheses. The results of the study showed that budget controls the financial behaviour of educational administrators. It prevents waste and reckless spending of funds. It reported also that secondary School principals do not request their heads of department to provide information on items of their needs which shows that these principals do not encourage the participation of the other staff in budget preparations. The findings further revealed that budgets are often prepared hurriedly such that important issues are not taken into consideration.
Further, Nzekwe (2007) empirically examined budgetary practice of secondary school principals and bursars in Enugu State. The research design was descriptive survey. The population of the study comprised of all the male and female secondary school principals ,bursars and financial officers in Enugu Education Zone. Twenty Eight (28) principals and twenty eight (28) bursars making a total population of fifty six (56) were used and it was revealed that budgetary control has a standard format in the zone and should be prepared every academic year. Also, Maritim (2013) determined the effects of budgeting on the financial performance of manufacturing and commercial Parastatals in Kenya. A descriptive research design was adopted and data was collected by use of a questionnaire. Findings were that the budgeting practices that are common among the firms are budget planning, budget participation and budgetary sophistication.
The highlighted tentative assertions were formulated in the null form: i. H01: There is no significant relationship between budgetary control and the liquidity of private educational institutions in Rivers state. ii.H02: There is no significant relationship between budgetary control and the Return on assets of private educational institutions in Rivers state. iii. H03: There is no significant relationship between budget implementation and liquidity of private educational institutions in Rivers state. iv. H04: There is no significant relationship between budget implementation and Return on Assets of private educational institutions in Rivers state.

Methodology
The study adopted the descriptive survey research design with a population of one hundred and sixty three (163) Table 1 above, shows the regression analysis summary on the effect of budgetary control and budget implementation on liquidity. The indication is that the Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.802 on the relationship between the predictor variables and the dependent variable. The value of r is very high indicating that a very strong relationship between the predictor variables and the dependent variable. The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) = 0.643, this implies that 64.3% variation of liquidity is explained by the changes in the predictor variables, thus the remaining 35.7% is explained by other variables not included in the model. The F-calculated of 3.10 had a significant F-value 0.000 which indicate the usefulness of the model. Conventionally, F-cal = 79.368> F-tab (0.05,2,88) = 3.10 hence the conclusion of a good model utility is upheld.

Test of Hypothesis One and Three
Budgetary control had a calculated t-value of |9.347|>t-tab (0.05,90) = 1.66 and a corresponding significant probability Value (PV) of 0.00 < 0.05 level of significance, hence the researcher conclude that budgetary control statistically affect liquidity.
Budget implementation had a calculated t-value of |3.049|> t-tab (0.05,90) = 1.66 and a corresponding significant probability value (PV) of 0.003 < 0.05 level of significance, hence the researcher conclude that budget implementation statistically affect liquidity.  Table 2 above, shows the regression analysis summary on the effect of budgetary control and budget implementation on Return on Assets which indicates that the Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.762 on the relationship between the predictor variables and the dependent variable. The value of r is very high indicating that a very strong relationship between the predictor variables and the dependent variable. The coefficient of determination (R 2 ) = 0.580, this implies that 58.0% variation of dividend policy is explained by the changes in the predictor variables, thus the remaining 42.0% is explained by other variables not included in the model. The Fcalculated of 3.10 had a significant F-value 0.000 which indicate the usefulness of the model. Conventionally, Fcal = 60.860> F-tab (0.05,2,88) = 3.10 hence the conclusion of a good model utility is upheld.

Test of Hypotheses Two and Four
Budgetary control had a calculated t-value of |4.874| >t-tab (0.05,90) = 1.66 and a corresponding significant probability Value (PV) of 0.00 < 0.05 level of significance, hence the researcher conclude that budgetary control statistically affect Return on Assets.
Budget implementation had a calculated t-value of |6.434| > t-tab (0.05,90) = 1.66 and a corresponding significant probability value (PV) of 0.000< 0.05 level of significance, hence the researcher conclude that budget implementation statistically affect Return on Assets.

Discussion of Findings
The survey elicited evidence from the findings of tested hypothesis.(i)There is a strong and positive relationship between budgetary control and liquidity of private educational institutions in Rivers state,(ii)There is a strong and positive relationship between budgetary control and return on assets of private educational institutions in Rivers state,(iii)There is a strong and positive relationship between budget implementation and liquidity of private educational institutions in Rivers state and (iv)There is a strong and positive relationship between budget implementation and return on assets of private educational institutions in Rivers state The findings of the study conforms with the findings of other studies. For instance, Ekwelem (1990) carried out a study on budget and budgetary control and performance of academic libraries in the context of University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The questionnaire was used to collect data while regression analysis was used to measure the level of significance between the hypothesized variables and it was found that there is a statistically significant relationship between budgetary control and performance of academic libraries in Nigeria University, Nsukka. The study further revealed that budgetary control is an essential tool for setting standards towards actual accomplishment as against set objectives in the organization. Similarly, the findings are in tandem with the empirical views of Obayi (1996), who investigated budgeting in private business schools in Enugu South Local Government Area . The descriptive survey research found that there is a positive significant relationship between budgetary control and private business education budgetary practice.

Conclusion
From the findings of the study, it can be inferred that there is a significant positive relationship between budgetary practices and liquidity. Again, it can be deduced that there is a significant positive relationship between budgetary practices and performance of private educational institutions meaning that budgetary practices and policies are pivotal to performance in the private educational stratum particularly in Rivers State.In line with the findings of this study and to the extent of its consistency with the empirical views of other studies, the study recommends that schools' proprietors and principals should adopt effective budgetary practices to enhance their institutions performance.


Willingness to Pay Tuition and Risk-Taking Proclivities Among Students During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Fundamental Conundrum for Universities

 Background. As universities around the world decide whether to remain open or to close their campuses because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they often are doing so without objective information on the preferences and risk tolerance of their students. In this study, we aim to quantify students’: 1) risk tolerance for in-person instruction; 2) willingness to pay for in-person instruction versus online-only instruction; and 3) risk-tolerance for social activities held off campus.Methods. We developed an automated survey tool that administered a “standard gamble” exercise grounded in game theory to 46 Columbia University public health graduate students who were knowledgeable about COVID-19 and who had experience with both online and offline coursework. Students were asked to trade between the risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and: 1) attending classes in-person versus online and 2) attending parties in the greater New York City area. We also assessed their willingness to pay for online only tuition and plans to travel off campus.Results. On average, students were willing to accept a 23% (standard error [SE]: 4%) risk of infection on campus over the semester in exchange for the opportunity to attend classes in-person. Students were willing-to-pay only 48% (SE: 3%) of typical in-person tuition were courses held exclusively online, and no students were willing to pay full price for online-only instruction. Students planned to leave campus an average of 3.6 times per week (SE: 0.54), and 15% of the students would be willing to attend a party in the community surrounding the university even if the prevalence of circulating COVID-19 were high.Conclusions. Students with a strong knowledge of COVID-19 transmission and risks are an enigma: they are willing to pay only around 50% for online classes but likely to engage in activities that present significant barriers to holding in-person classes. This enigma underscores the conundrum facing universities.Trial registration: NA.

Introduction
A large number of universities are open to live instruction in the Fall of 2020. 1 These universities will open with extensive preventive measures in place but a substantial proportion of students might not adhere to them. As a result, universities face a substantial challenge. On one hand, if they re-open, students could prove to be a major pathway for the spread of COVID-19, thereby worsening the pandemic and requiring the university to suspend in-person activities. On the other hand, if universities open to online-only instruction, they will nd it di cult to sustain their educational mission, maintain enrollment, and balance their budgets. 2 Our objective was to inform university decision-makers regarding the trade-offs that students are willing to make in exchange for having classes held in-person as well as their perceived acceptability of holding classes online only. To assess students' preferences and likely behaviors, we used a "standard gamble" exercise that assesses how individuals try to make rational decisions under uncertainty. 3 Based on game theory, the process asks participants choose between two alternative options, each with its own probability, until they nd each option to be equivalent. This tool allows a more accurate estimate of students' preferences for risk than a simple survey alone. 4 If students are not willing to tolerate any substantial risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and simultaneously are willing to pay regular tuition for online classes, then online-only instruction is a logical choice. Online-only instruction also makes sense from a public health standpoint if students are eager to socialize even in the context of a dangerous pandemic. Conversely, in-person classes would be recommended if students are unwilling to pay adequate tuition for on-line only instruction and are willing to observe public health guidelines.
For this exercise, we asked students to make a gamble between the risk COVID-19 infection in exchange for taking classes in-person. If the student is willing to take the gamble of being infected, then the stakes are raised until the student is ambivalent about the decision between online and in-person classes.
Similarly, we asked students to make a trade-off between risking infection with COVID-19 and attending a party. We also assessed students' willingness to pay for online-only instruction and the likelihood that they would take public transportation or eat out at restaurants.

Sample
The exercise that we deployed required underlying knowledge of the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as experience with both in-person and online learning. 4,5 We therefore chose to survey students who had recently completed a Master's of Public Health program at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and who had attended both in-person classes during the Fall 2019 and early Spring 2020 semesters as well as online classes after the lockdown in the middle of the Spring 2020 semester.

Administrators in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public
Health identi ed 30 students who had graduated in Spring 2020 and had been engaged in student groups, helped with interviewing incoming students, or worked as teaching assistants.
All 30 students agreed to participate. Some of these students subsequently recruited 16 additional students to participate, resulting in a total sample size of 46 students. To maintain anonymity and expedite IRB approval, no demographic details were obtained from the students. The rst 30 responses to the survey are very likely to be the rst 30 students contacted as the request from students for recruiting other students came after the rst 30 responses were received. We conducted t-tests to compare the means of the rst 30 responses with those from the additional 16 students to ensure that the mean responses and variance did not differ from the initial 30 students.

Survey
We used Survey Sparrow, Inc. (Palo Alto, CA) to administer the survey. Survey Sparrow deploys an interactive chat bot that implements skip logic and can accept conditional terms. Thus, it is possible to ask a subsequent question that is conditional on the response to the rst question.
To assess students' preferences and likely behaviors, we used a "standard gamble" exercise to understand how individuals try to make rational decisions under uncertainty. 3 Based on game theory, the process asks participants choose between two alternative options, each with its own probability, until they nd each option to be equivalent. This tool allows a more accurate estimate of students' preferences for risk than a simple survey alone. 4 Students were rst presented with data on their age-speci c risk of illness, hospitalization, and death as well as possible symptoms associated with COVID-19: "As a 20-25-year-old…you will typically have a u-like illness in which you are in bed with a fever and cough. You will be quarantined for 2-3 weeks depending on the duration of your illness. If you become infected, you have a 1.04% chance of being hospitalized and a chance of requiring ventilation or dying (0.03%)." These risks were computed from a recent study that provided age-speci c infection mortality rates. 6 Students were then presented with a "standard gamble" exercise, in which they were asked to trade between the risk of illness presented from in-person instruction and the safety of online instruction ( Fig. 1). Questions regarding risk offered 'Yes' and 'No' answer options when asking students whether they were willing to accept a certain risk to take classes in-person rather than online. The gamble began with a trade-off between a 10% chance of becoming infected while attending in-person classes versus a 0% chance of becoming infected taking online classes. The bot then increased or decreased their chances of infection depending on their response until an equilibrium was reached. If the student accepted this risk, they were presented with a 5% increase in risk and asked again if they would accept this risk of infection to attend classes in-person. This exercise continued (to 100%), with risk being increased 5% with each question, until the student felt they no longer would accept the risk of infection in exchange for in-person class. If the student rejected the 10% risk, the student was presented with 5%, 1%, 0.5%, 0.1%, 0.05%, and 0.001% risk until they were willing to accept the risk. If the student rejected all presented risk, it was recorded as an acceptance of no risk of infection in exchange for attending inperson class.
To assess preferences for in-person versus online classes more directly, we asked a simple rating scale question regarding students' willingness-to-pay for online instruction based upon the average out-ofpocket tuition paid university-wide. (This is about one-third of the tuition charged, and is lower because students tend to receive grants and scholarships.) Imagine that you are paying tuition out of pocket, and the annual tuition for online classes is $20,000. All things being equal (you remain in your New York housing and obtain a degree from Columbia University), how much would you be willing to pay if the courses were only available on Zoom as opposed to inperson? Input value between 0 and 20,000.
Next, we conducted a standard gamble exercise to assess the students' willingness to expose themselves to infection in a social setting (Fig. 2). Now imagine that your best friend is planning on having a party in student housing. The circulating rate of COVID-19 in the community is very low at the moment, with just a few people in New York City testing positive. The party will involve drinking and talking with four or ve other friends, some of whom you don't know. Would you be willing to go to the party?
If the student answered 'Yes', then the prevalence of Covid-19 was increased to medium but not negligible (a "few hundred people") and then to high (a "few thousand people"). At that point, the exercise was stopped.
To assess day-to-day risk tolerance, we asked a simple survey question: Approximately, how many times a week do you plan to leave the Columbia campus and spend time in the general New York City area, possibly interacting with non-Columbia a liates (riding the subway, eating at restaurants, etc.)?
Results are reported as means and standard errors (SE).

Sample validation
The mean risk tolerance values and willingness-to-pay values were not statistically signi cantly different between the initial 30 responses and the nal 16 responses (e.g., the two-tailed p-values for risk of infection in classroom, number of times leaving campus per week, and mean willingness-to-pay for tuition were 0.72, 0.55, and 0.70 respectively).

Desire for in-person instruction
On average, students were willing to accept a 23% (SE = 4%) risk of infection on campus over the semester in exchange for the opportunity to attend class in-person. Of the 46 students, 37 (80%) were willing to accept a > 1% chance of infection and 3 (7%) were willing to accept a 100% chance of infection.
One student was not willing to attend classes in-person unless the risk was 0%, and 9 (20%) were willing to attend in-person classes if the risk was less than 1%.
With respect to costs, students were willing-to-pay an average of only 48% (SE: 3%) of their tuition if courses were held exclusively online. No student was willing to pay full price for exclusively on-line instruction, and the maximum reported willingness-to-pay for online-only courses was 85% of standard tuition.

Tolerance for risk of infection in the community
Of the 46 students, 27 (59%) indicated no willingness to attend a party over the entire semester. Of the 19 students who were willing to attend a party with some incidence of COVID-19 in the community, 6(13% of the total sample) indicated that they would do so only if the community prevalence of COVID-19 was low; another 6 (13% of the total sample) were willing to attend in the moderate prevalence scenario, and 7 (15% of the total sample) were willing to attend even if the prevalence of Covid-19 in the community were high (presence of thousands of infectious cases in the community).
Students planned to dine out an average of 3.6 times per week (SE: 0.54). Of the 46 students, 4 (~ 9%) indicated that they would dine out 10 times or more per week.

Discussions
Many universities across the nation opened in the Fall of 2020, while others vacillated between opening, partially opening, and closing. 7 The Spring of 2021 will require clearer decision making. On average, our sample of students who are knowledgeable about COVID-19-associated risks would be willing to risk a 23% chance of infection in exchange for in-person classes and would be willing to pay only 48% of the cost of in-person classes if were classes held exclusively online. None of the 46 students surveyed were willing to pay full price for online-only courses even assuming they received full academic credit.
However, university and local elected o cials alike should be cognizant that this risk tolerance, even when measured among public health students, extends to with more attending large gatherings and to travelling off campus. About 40% of students of students were willing to attend a party, including over 25% who would attend even if the community prevalence of COVID-19 were moderate or high, and students planned to dine out off-campus an average of 3.6 times per week.
Our study was limited in that it was a sample of 46 recent public health graduates at one school. Moreover, some students reached out to other students to ask them to take the survey. Since no identi ers were collected, it is possible that these additional students had similar risk preferences as the primary respondent. However, the means for the nal 16 responses were not statistically signi cantly different than the initial 30 responses, suggesting that these additional 16 responses produced little in uence on the results.
Although our respondents have the requisite knowledge of Covid-19 and had rst-hand experience with both online and in-person instruction, our risk assessment should be interpreted with caution. Students who are younger and less knowledgeable may be even more inclined to attend large gatherings. In addition, the perception of risk may be different between well-trained public health students with a deep understanding of infectious diseases epidemiology and other student populations. Another factor is the socioeconomic characteristics of the students in our survey and the institution's location in Upper Manhattan that should be considered by university authorities and decision-makers. While the Mailman School of Public Health student population is socio-economically and demographically similar to the general student population in the US than Columbia University as a whole, the students may be more altruistic and health contentious than other students. Therefore, the generalizability of our ndings to other populations with a different composition of risk-aversion, risk-neutral, and risk-seeking individuals should be interpreted with caution.
Finally, we based willingness-to-pay on a round valuation number ($20,000) that was less than the tuition charged by the university ($60,000). We instead used the lower number because it re ects what the average student pays after scholarships and grants.
It is also unclear how students' risk of infection might differ were classes offered exclusively online and were students to remain off-campus. When classes are held on-campus, students may live in an environment with signi cantly more infection controls in place than they might have were they to remain in their hometown and take classes online. For example, one work-around for students' willingness to take on risk is to place students in "cohorts." In this model, they have opportunities to socialize, but those opportunities are limited to smaller numbers of students who live together and take the same classes together. 8 University life likely offers more opportunities for socializing than, for example, living with one's parents. Therefore, it may be that holding classes online-only comes at a lower risk of infection with COVID-19 than holding classes in person.
However, it may be that the "worst-case" scenario for many universities is a situation in which students are invited back to campus only then to switch to online-only instruction. In such cases, students are removed from their hometown, placed in proximity to other students near campus, and then removed from the protective environment of on-campus instruction. In such situations, both student dissatisfaction and the risk of infection may be maximized. For this reason alone, universities with large numbers of students off-campus may wish to: 1) re-consider re-opening or 2) commit to remaining open in the face of surging COVID-19 cases in the Spring of 2021; should they have to close campus, then the "worst-case" situation is likely to be realized.
It is unclear whether the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for reopening universities will be su cient to reduce risk on campus. 9 Our ndings suggest that, irrespective of whether they do reduce infection on campus, students appear willing to accept a about a 25% risk of infection in exchange for the opportunity to attend in-person classes, socialize, and dine out. Furthermore, none of the 46 students in our sample was willing to pay full price for online-only instruction, and on average they were willing to pay less than 50% of standard tuition.
This combination of students' risk tolerance proclivities and their unwillingness to pay tuition places universities in a true conundrum. Some have been willing to assume, the infectious risks, only to shut down because of infectious spread. Others may decide to remain open despite the infectious hazards, perhaps by attempting a variety of "cohort" approaches to reduce risks. Still others are attempting to enrich online-only instruction and to collect most or all of their tuition revenue. Unfortunately, no single instructional model can conclusively balance the desires of students, the usual priorities of universities, and the public's health.

Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate: NA Consent for publication: NA Availability of data and materials: NA Competing interests: Authors declare no con ict of interest Funding: This study was funded by an internal fund from Columbia University School of Medicine.
Authors' contributions: PAM, KK, LG, and ZZ developed the idea; PAM and ZZ provided technical support; LG and PM provided administrative support; ZZ helped with visualization; All authors contributed to writing.

Figure 1
Flow diagram depicting the gamble students were asked to take in a choice between a chance of infection with COVID-19 and attending class online rather than in-person. Flow diagram depicting the gamble students were asked to take in choosing to remain at home or to attend a party at different levels of COVID-19 in the community.


The Use of Visual Art as an Alternative Learning to Develop Storytelling Ability of Elementary School Students

This study aimed to perceive the use of visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of elementary school students. Storytelling for children is very important because by telling stories their brain will register certain stories and events that have occurred, give moral messages and can strengthen the power of memory brain. Visual art is used as their learning media, so their ability to tell stories is more fun and creative. This study uses qualitative methods, the data was collected using observation sheets, interviews, and documentation. The population of the study were 66 students, class of IV Parung Bingung Elementary School 1 in Depok. The sample taken were 15 students. Based on the results of the study it can be seen that students can easily tell stories using visual art media in the learning process. Sharpening their storytelling ability can be used as a media to develop students’ personalities and moralities at such young age, so that it creates communication that is harmony between parents and their children at home and teachers will be helped in the learning process so that the purposes of the study is within reach.

Introduction
The development of science and technology which is increasingly advanced and developing, is very challenging to all aspects of human life. Increasing the mastery, benefits and development of science and technology is one of the goals to be achieved by the Indonesian people. Change for change's sake will continue to occur very quickly, this is due to the need to obtain various information. This ability requires sharp thinking, between systematic thinking and critical thinking that can be developed through the learning process. Learning is a process of behavior change that is caused by an individual who gives responses to the environment and people who have learned will notice the changes in behavior [1]. One of the purposes of the study is achieving the goals which had been determined. Teacher's success in reaching the goals can be seen from the students; ability to apply the things they have learned in their lives. According to the research of some experts that 94% of children learn through vision and hearing, then the ability to tell is used to sharpen the children's abilities at school. Storytelling is a way to carry on cultural heritage from one generation to the next [2]. Media makes learning more fun. There are many learning media, one of them is visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability for children. Based on the background of the study above, a study was conducted with the title "how to use visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of Elementary School Students?" The objective of the study is to determine the extent of using visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of Elementary School Students.

The Essence of Visual Art as an Alternative Learning Media
Learning media are widely used for learning purposes. Learning media are all things that can be used to channel messages, thereby stimulating students' attention, interests, thoughts and feelings in learning activities to achieve learning goals [3]. Children as the nation's embryo, need to be equipped with creativity to prepare themselves to face the changing times. Whereas creativity is one of the potentials that children could have and needs to be developed since their early age. Every child has their own creative talents. One of the media that can be used to grow children's creativity is visual art. Visual art media consists of two dimensions with painting activities, as well as three-dimensional media with sculpting, plasticine and space play in the surrounding environment. The work of these activities is called visual art. Visual art is a fine art that developed in the modern era, is a combination of pure art with design and crafts, divided into fine art (painting, graphic arts, sculpture, and film art) and applied arts (architecture, visual communication design, fashion design, and product design) [4].
So visual art is the process of the activity in creating art which resulted in two-dimensional or threedimensional art. The use of instructional media in teaching and learning can encourage new wishes and interests, encourage motivation and stimulation of learning activities, and bring motivations to students.
The use of instructional media at the stage of teaching orientation will greatly help the effectiveness of the learning process and delivery of messages at the time. In addition to encouraging students' motivation and interest, learning media can help students improve their understanding, present the data attractively and reliably, facilitate the data interpretation, and condense information [5].
Learning media that generally used are direct media such as posters, statues, dolls or others that are ready or commonly used. In this study the media used were visual art which had to be made first, so that children used to know the feeling in the process of making visual art. Visual art used in this activity were drawing two-dimensional and making three-dimensional are from plasticine.
According to Levi & Lentz in Arsyad (2002) stated four functions of visual media, especially images, namely (1) attention function, which is to attract and direct the attention of students to concentrate on the content of the lessons relating to the visual meaning displayed or accompanying the text of the subject matter (2) affective function, can build up students' emotions and attitudes, (3) cognitive functions, facilitate the achievement of goals for understanding and remembering information or messages and (4) compensatory function provide context for understanding texts, help students who are low in reading to organize information in text and remember it.
The benefits of instructional media are stated by Daryanto (2010) as follows: (1) Clarifying messages so they are not too verbalistic, (2) Overcoming limitations of space, time, energy and sense power, (3) Gives a passion for learning, more direct interaction between students and learning resources, (4) Allowing children to learn independently based on their talents and visual, auditory and kinesthetic abilities, (5) Giving the same stimulation, equating experiences and giving rise to the same perception, (6) The learning process contains five components of communication, teacher (communicator), learning material, learning media, students (communicant), and learning objectives. There are several types of learning media, the following are the opinions expressed by Sudjana (2002), namely: a. Two-dimensional media (graphics); Media or visual aids that are flat / two-dimensional for example pictures (flat figure models), photos, graphics, charts or diagrams, posters, cartoons and comics. b. Three-dimensional media; Media or visual aids in the form of space / three dimensions, namely in the form of models such as solid models, cross-sectional models, work models, mock-ups, bioramas and space-building models. c. Projection media; Projection models include slides, film strips, films and OHP. So visual art of this research is an activity to create works in the form of two-dimensional media, which are the results of drawing activities and making of three-dimensional works in the form of plasticine activity. The work of drawing and making shapes from plasticine will be poured in the story so that the child will tell his friends in front of the class. It was as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of elementary school children.

The Essence of Storytelling Ability of Elementary School Students
Elementary School Education as an educational institution plays an important and significant role in determining the state and nation of the future. It is said to be important and significant because it is through basic education that students who are children of the nation know various basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. In elementary school children are in a state of development in creative expression, where the level of creativity is still very high. Therefore, efforts to educate multiple intelligences can use a variety of media in accordance with the child's ability level [7].
In the State Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia No. 20 of 2003 concerning the national education system article 17 paragraph 1 confirms that basic education is the level of education that underlies the level of secondary education [8]. Thus, it is certain that basic education will determine the success of learning at the next level. Storytelling is one that is often used to develop students' skills in elementary school. The story is a series of events conveyed, both originating from real events (non-fiction) or not real (fiction). Fairytale means imagined / unreal / fiction stories, such as fables (animals and inanimate objects), sage (adventure stories), saga (folklore), legends (origin), mythe (gods, fairies, spirits), ephos (big story; Mahabharata, Ramayana, saur senuh, tinular said). So fairy tales are stories, but stories aren't necessarily fairy tales [9]. Argues that storytelling or often termed by storytelling, allows people to talk without imposing their opinions on others. Because every listener has the freedom to agree or disagree and will try to put his position wherever they want in the story. [10] There are two visual aids used in storytelling, namely: 1) Storytelling with direct media tools is a storytelling activity that teachers do by using real objects or actual objects, for example (rabbits, cats, birds), household appliances (eg plates, spoons, cups), and so on. 2) Tell stories with indirect media, those are, fake objects, pictures in a book, cutouts attached to a flannel board, read a story (story reading), puppet show and so on [11].
Interesting stories can help give ideas and awaken children's memories about forms they have seen. In this study the media used were visual art, namely students' drawings and plasticine arts.

Methodology
This research was conducted at Parung Bingung 1 Elementary School in Depok since January-June 2019. The study used qualitative research to find, obtain, and analyze the results of observations made by researchers. the methods are used qualitative descriptive method [12]. Research data collection in the form of observation, interviews, and documentation. The population of the study was 66 children in grade IV of Parung Bingung 1 Elementary School.

Result and Discussion
This research activity uses visual art to develop students' storytelling ability. The visual art media used are the two dimensions of activity in the form of drawing and three-dimensional media of work activity in the form of plasticine. Based on the results of observations to all respondents with the total of 66 students of Parung Bingung 1 Elementary School, the results were obtained by 15 children being the subject of research. The first activity of the study, children were given a two-dimensional media stimulus. With drawing tools such as pencils, eraser, drawing paper, colored pencils and crayons. Students were given 60 minutes to draw anything. Students are can draw anything with available materials. Then the research field assistant carefully watched and responded to the child in terms of the creative aspects of the work they produced.  After the students were given 60 minutes to draw, the results of the drawing were collected. Then they sat neatly on their chair. They continued, one by one, to turn in their work and come to the front of the class, then the children had to tell us about the drawing they have drawn in the form of their story. Children told their stories with enthusiasm and they felt happy, even though some were still shy.
The second activity of research, making the work of plasticine. Students are given plasticine and colored plastic for the base to avoid littering the table as well as the base for the work. All students are freed to make any form of plasticine.  After being given 60 minutes to make the work form objects from plasticine, then the work is placed on each table. When all is finished, the child will be called by name to come forward to the class, then the child tells the work in a story that will be told in front of class.

Figure 4. Plasticine activity result
To find out the effectiveness of using visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of elementary school students, children must be able to answer 5W plus 1 H (what, who, when, where, why, how). So, with the presence of a 2-dimensional visual art in the form of a drawing and a 3dimensional visual art in creating shapes and drawings from plasticine is quite effective as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of elementary students.

Conclusion
The use of visual art as an alternative learning to develop storytelling ability of Parung Bingung 1 Elementary School Students in Depok, the process went smoothly. The results of storytelling were very satisfying by using visual art because students made visual art both 2-dimension in the form of drawings and 3-dimensions in the form of plasticine from which they had to present in front of the class.It is recommended visual art for further use in the future that the use of other visual art to be improved so that the formation of student creativity and the learning process will be more fun. It is expected that teachers are more creative in developing other learning media so that children are more interested and enthusiastic in the learning process.


extfieldsofstudy: Psychology Medicine

text:
An Eye-Tracking Study of Sketch Processing: Evidence From Russian

This study investigates the online process of reading and analyzing of sketchnotes (visual notes containing a handwritten text and drawings) on Russian language material. Using the eye-tracking method, we compared the processing of different types of sketchnotes [“path” (trajectory), linear, and radial] and the processing of a verbal text. Biographies of Russian writers were used as the material. In a preliminary experiment, we asked 89 college students to read the biographies and to evaluate each text or sketch using five scales (from −2 to +2). The best example for each of three formats of sketchnotes and a verbal text was chosen. In the main experiment, 21 secondary school students examined four different biographies in four different formats (three sketchnotes and a verbal text), answered to the factual and analytical questions to these texts and estimated the difficulty of each text. We measured the total dwell time, the total fixation count, the average fixation duration for each stimulus as well as for separate zones inside the sketches including verbal and non-verbal information. Our results show that readers process the information better and faster while reading sketchnotes than a verbal text. In the trajectory sketchnotes, the readers followed the order of elements aimed by the author of the sketchnotes better than in the radial and linear sketchnotes. The analysis of participants’ eye movements while processing the stimuli made it possible to propose several recommendations for creating effective sketchnotes.

INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, there is a growing trend toward the use of visual information in various spheres of life (psychology, education, marketing, etc.). Texts containing two non-homogeneous parts -verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources (or "modes") -have become an integral part of communication. The studies of infographics (graphic visual representation of information), sketchnoting (visual notes including a handwritten text and drawings), advertising copies, multimedia courses integrating the verbal and non-verbal elements are of particular relevance.
The polycode text analysis is traditionally based on the Dual Cording Theory (DCT) (Paivio, 1971(Paivio, , 1986. The theory assumes that there are two distinct cognitive systems: one for processing verbal units and the other one (imagery) for dealing with non-verbal objects/events. Paivio (2006) indicates that the information is represented in the memory by a text and a corresponding illustration, not just by a text. It is assumed that the information in a polycode text is doubledecoded: the concept of an image is "superimposed" on the concept of a verbal text, the interaction of these two concepts leads to the creation of a general concept (meaning) of the text (Telminov, 2009;Fernández-Fontecha et al., 2018). Independent parts of a polycode text interact and create a "holistic experience, " the combination of the visual language with the written language.
In many studies, the influence of visual components on the comprehension of the whole polycode text is evaluated by offline tests (questionnaires, scales, etc.) (Cohn, 2016). However, these methods can only measure the result of the comprehension process. Thus, the identification of the particular elements which influence different stages of the process is difficult. Eye tracking techniques provide online information about learners' behavior during text reading. As Rayner (1998) points out, by using eye tracking, one can study reading as a process, instead of "a mere end-result." During the last 20 years, a lot of empirical and experimental evidence on online processing of polycode texts (including comics and visual narratives) appeared. One of the paradigms is called Visual Language Theory (VLT) which describes how visual lexical items are read taking into consideration the structure of polycode samples and trying to develop the "narrative grammar of sequential images" (Cohn, 2018). This approach argues that verbal and non-verbal components operate in parallel as interfering structures.
Polycode texts are regarded as a new type of texts used in education (Kazakova, 2016). They have become a crucial part of teaching in a wide range of academic and practical disciplines (Altieri, 2017;Chandler, 2017). The educational aspects of the polycode text processing are considered among others in the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) (Mayer, 2009). This theory assumes that the combination of verbal information and pictures makes it easier for learners to understand and memorize a text. While studying the processing of verbal and non-verbal information, Levie and Lentz (1982) concluded that the information supported by both a text and a picture is acquired much better. The more switches there are between a text and an image while reading a polycode text, the better a reader understands the material (e.g. Mason et al., 2013;Scheiter and Eitel, 2015). It has been shown that if students do not pay enough attention to the pictures and focus mainly on the text zones or untimely correlate verbal and visual information, the effectiveness of training falls significantly (Hannus and Hyönä, 1999;Schwonke et al., 2009;Schmidt-Weigand et al., 2010;Cromley et al., 2013a,b;Mason et al., 2013;Renkl and Scheiter, 2017). Moreno and Mayer (2002) and Johnson and Mayer (2012) tried to solve this problem by means of additional instructions. Ozcelik et al. (2009) and Scheiter and Eitel (2015) used spatialcolor schemes reducing the distance between the text and the picture or highlighting the corresponding verbal and non-verbal elements in one color. However, such tools were shown to be effective only for poorly prepared students, but do not influence the results of students with a higher level of training Sweller et al., 2003;Kalyuga, 2007;Richter et al., 2017).
This research is conducted within the CTML and is aimed to study the processing of sketchnoting (or visual notes) as an example of a polycode (multimodal) text. As far as we know, sketchnotes have never become the object of a psycholinguistic research using online methods, although they seem to be worthwhile both for learning how we process multimodal information and for educational purposes as a new type of data compression. Sketchnoting combines various ways of presenting information and includes such uncommon for other types of polycode texts elements as hand-drawn typography, handwritten (not printed) texts, and many different visual components: drawings, arrows, lines, and dots (Rohde, 2013). Moreover, there are several distinct types of the organization of the material in sketchnotes. There are seven types of sketch structures: (1) path (trajectory; with arrows helping to navigate the text), (2) linear (information and visual components are arranged as in a normal verbal text -lines going from the left to the right), (3) radial (the main idea of the text is in the middle of the list surrounded by other text elements), (4) vertical (text elements are organized vertically: from the top to the bottom of the page), (5) modular (each piece of information forms a separate block), (6) skyscrapers (the information is organized in several vertically stretched rectangles), and (7) popcorn (with random arrangement of all blocks of information) (Rohde, 2013: 90) (see the layouts of all sketch structures in Supplementary Figure 1). Thus, we can compare how different structures are processed, explore the impact of a sketch type on the navigation decisions, and find out the most efficient sketch structure for retrieving the information. The aim of our study was to compare the processing of sketchnotes and a verbal text and to choose the best type of sketchnotes for transferring the information to a reader.

PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENT Goal
The goal of the preliminary experiment was to choose the stimuli for the main experiment, i.e. the sketchnotes of different structures and a verbal text that are evaluated as the most attractive (interesting, informative, good-structured, etc.) by school children -native speakers of Russian.

Material
We chose the biographies of four Russian poets for our study. A biography is usually a stereotyped text with a standard structure (including such common information as the years of life, the place of birth, education, some information about the family, profession, interests, the main stages of life, etc.). Biographies are often used while studying literature at school.
The poets were as follows: O. Mandelshtam, M. Voloshin, Z. Gippius, and I. Severyanin. All of them lived in the first half of the 20th century and their poems are not included in the obligatory school program in Russia. Thus, we can assume that the background of our participants who were school children did not influence significantly their performance in the experiments as most probably they were not familiar with the biographies we had chosen for our study.
The initial biographies were in verbal format (plain texts) and taken from one and the same resource (guide on literature). All the texts were of the same size and comparable level of readability 1 (Supplementary Table 1). To get the stimuli, we converted all biographies into three main sketch formats (that contain the features of all other types of sketchnotes): trajectory, linear, and radial using the guidelines provided in Rohde (2013). Thus, the material of the experiment consisted of 4 different verbal texts and 12 sketchnotes -three formats for each of four different biographies 2 . The readability level in all types of the sketchnotes was lower than in the plain texts.

Procedure and Participants
We asked 89 Russian school children (45 girls) to read the biographies and to evaluate each text or sketch using five scales (from −2 to +2 each): non-informative -informative, difficult to understand -easy to understand, not interesting -interesting, difficult to retell -easy to retell, bad structure -good structure. We used the Latin Square design. Every participant read four different biographies each of them presented either as a verbal text or in one of three sketch formats. Thus, every participant saw each type of the text and each biography only once. All the stimuli were presented in randomized order. The experiment lasted around 20 min for each participant.

Results
For each of 16 stimuli, we summed up the scores from all five scales for each participant and compared these aggregate scores for different formats of presentation of one and the same biography (using ANOVA and the Kruskal-Wallis test for independent samples according to the type of data distribution). We found the factor of the format of presentation to be significant for three out of four biographies. To reveal the best format for each of these three biographies we performed the unpaired twosample t-tests for each pair of formats within each biography. Surprisingly, for all four biographies, we got quite high aggregate scores for the verbal format. The sketchnotes that turned out to be significantly different from the verbal text are marked with an asterisk ( * ) on Supplementary Figures 2-5. We did not find the significant difference between the verbal text and the trajectory sketchnotes for any of the biographies.
For the main experiment, we had to choose four different formats of presentation from the preliminary experiment (linear sketchnotes, radial sketchnotes, trajectory sketchnotes, and a verbal text). As we planned to show all four formats for every participant in the main experiment, we could choose only one stimulus for each biography. Thus, taking into consideration this condition, we were choosing among the stimuli with the highest aggregate scores for each biography and finally got the following set of stimuli: (1) the biography of Z. Gippius -the verbal text; (2) the biography of I. Severyanin -the trajectory sketchnotes; (3) the biography of O. Mandelshtam -the radial sketchnotes; and (4) the biography of M. Voloshin -the linear sketchnotes. The text parts of the sketchnotes 2-4 were of a comparable readability level (Supplementary Table 2) and had the equal number of pictures.

MAIN EXPERIMENT Hypothesis
The hypothesis of the experiment was that readers process different text formats differently, trajectory sketchnotes being 2 The data are available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ 1xgpKcymbzI28bYoy3QpGINvoQDcQzcGz?usp=sharing easier to process and understand than other types of sketchnotes and a verbal text.

Participants
Twenty-one native speakers of Russian (secondary school children, 13-18 years old, 11 girls), who had not participated in the preliminary experiment, took part in the main experiment on voluntary basis. All subjects had normal or corrected to normal vision.

Procedure
We conducted an eye-tracking experiment. We used a SR Eyelink 1000 plus eye tracker (SR Research Ltd., ON, Canada) with a head holder ("desktop mode" configuration) and 27 LCD monitor (Acer v276hl) with a refresh rate of 60 Hz (screen resolution 1920 × 1080) to record the eye-movements of the participants. Viewing distance was 87 cm. It differs from the recommended eye-to-monitor distance for Eyelink 1000+, but it was the only way to place the monitor in the given conditions. We conducted several pilot trials and revealed that a participant could see all the letters and pictures of the stimuli at this distance and the ninepoint calibration and validation were successful. The average error level during calibration was <0.5 • ; the threshold was 1 • . Although viewing was binocular, we recorded participants' dominant eye. All but two of the participants had the right dominant eye. We used SR Research Experiment Builder to create and run the experiment and EyeLink Data Viewer to analyze the results.
After successful calibration and validation each subject received an instruction to examine four different biographies sequentially presented on the computer screen and be ready to answer the questions after each text or sketch. All biographies were presented on the computer screen for 5 min. The participants were free to press the spacebar button if they were ready to answer the questions earlier than after 5 min. For each biography, we prepared four factual questions, three questions revealing the general comprehension of the sketch or the text and one rating scale question for estimating whether the text was difficult or easy to understand (from −2 = very easy to +2 = very difficult). The list of questions for each sketch and a verbal text can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ 1xgpKcymbzI28bYoy3QpGINvoQDcQzcGz?usp=sharing. The participants answered orally. One of the experimenters marked correct answers in a special paper form. We also used a digital voice recorder Olympus WS-65OS to record the participants' responses to be able to revise the data. We used drift correction before presenting each text or sketch and if it turned out to be unsuccessful, we performed recalibration. The experiment lasted for about 40 min (including the calibration and recalibration period).
The experiment was conducted in July 2018 at the Educational Centre "Sirius" (Sochi, Russia) in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the existing Russian and international regulations concerning ethics in research. It was approved by the Ethics Committee of Saint-Petersburg State University in June 2018. As the participants were under 18 years old, we obtained written informed consents for their participation in the experiment from their parents.

Measures
We considered several global eye movement measures traditionally used for studying polycode text processing (dwell time, total fixation count, average fixation duration). As the aim of the research was to compare the processing of different types of the sketchnotes, we also calculated the number of deviations from the trajectory aimed by the author of the sketchnotes while each participant processed every sketch. We also segmented all sketchnotes into interest areas, i.e. verbal and non-verbal elements of the sketch, and analyzed interest area dwell time, interest area first run dwell time, interest area fixation count for each verbal and non-verbal zone of the texts in order to compare the processing of different structural elements of the sketchnotes. The number of correct answers to the factual and analytical questions and the subjective difficulty of different stimuli were also analyzed.

Results
Due to some technical problems, we did not manage to record the eye-movements of three participants while processing one of the formats (twice the verbal text and once the trajectory sketchnotes) and the eye-movements of one more participant while processing two formats (the verbal text and the linear sketchnotes). Thus, when we compared the processing of different formats by one and the same participant, we excluded the results of these four participants.
The Friedman test showed the influence of the factor "Format type" on the parameters "Dwell time" [χ 2 (3) = 19.24, p < 0.001], "Total fixation count" [χ 2 (3) = 23.61, p < 0.001], and "Average fixation duration" [χ 2 (3) = 12.88, p = 0.005]. According to Conover's post hoc tests, sketchnotes of any format were read significantly more quickly and with a smaller number of fixations than the text whereas the processing of different types of sketchnotes did not differ significantly (see Supplementary  Tables 3, 4 and Supplementary Figures 6, 7, respectively). The difference in the average fixation duration is not that clear-cut. There is no significant difference between the average fixation duration for the trajectory and radial sketchnotes (p = 0.882), the linear and radial sketchnotes (p = 0.059), and the linear sketchnotes and the text (p = 0.186) whereas in all other pairs we did find significant differences. The mean fixation duration for the text is shorter than for any type of the sketchnotes, but the results not of all the participants follow this tendency.
While reading the trajectory sketchnotes the participants significantly more often (p = 0.019 in the Binomial test) followed the order of reading the sketch elements aimed by the author of the sketchnotes than diverged from it (we considered that the participant diverged from the aimed trajectory if there were three or more deviations) (Supplementary Table 5). While processing the radial sketchnotes, there were more participants who followed the order of reading than those who did not, but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.245). Only around 30% of the participants followed the order of the sketched elements aimed by the author while processing the linear sketchnotes (Supplementary Table 5).
Our results also revealed that all the sketchnotes were subjectively evaluated by the participants to be easier to understand than the verbal text (the median value Me = 2 and Me = 1, respectively). The participants answered correctly to significantly more questions after all sketchnotes than after the verbal text. The influence of this factor was shown by the Friedman test: χ 2 (3) = 18.26, p < 0.001; the Conover's post hoc tests demonstrated the significant difference between the results for the text and for all types of the sketchnotes (Supplementary Table 6). The same was true if we compared the number of correct answers only to factual questions. For analytical questions, we got significantly better results for the linear and trajectory sketch, whereas for the radial sketch the distribution of correct and incorrect answers did not show statistically significant difference from the results for the verbal text (Supplementary Table 7).
The radial sketch (the biography of Mandelshtam; see Supplementary Figure 8) is of particular interest since it contains both horizontal and diagonal zones. We compared the processing of a horizontal zone (interest areas "Mtext_1_mood" and "Mtext_2_Pushkin" together) to the processing of a diagonal zone ("Mtext_6_epigramma_diagonal") of the same size (containing equal number of symbols: 154 and 156, respectively) and revealed that the dwell time for the horizontal zone was significantly less than for the diagonal zone (W = 45, p = 0.024).
We compared the processing of zones containing verbal and non-verbal information in the linear sketch (the biography of Voloshin; see Supplementary Figure 9) as it was the only sketchnotes where there were several comparable pieces of information presented both in verbal and non-verbal format. These were the portraits of Russian poets and writers ("Bimage_2_Cvetaeva, " "Bimage_13_Beli, " "Bimage_14_Gorki") and signs with their names ("Btext_12_Cvetaeva, " "Btext_13_Beli, " "Btext_14_Gorkij"). These zones of interest were of the same size and the same content. We revealed that the verbal components in all three image-text pairs were processed less quickly (Tsvetaeva -W = 176, p = 0.006; Belyj -187, p < 0.001; Gor'kij -156, p = 0.015). However, we didn't find this effect for the portrait of the main hero. There was no significant difference between the processing of the portrait of Voloshin ("Bimage_1_partrait") and the verbal zone with his name ("Btext_1_titel") above it (W = 120, p = 0.596).
The average time spent on the title zones turned out to differ significantly in all three sketchnotes being the longest for the biography of Mandelshtam (the radial sketchnotes) and the shortest for the biography of Severyanin (the trajectory sketchnotes) [see Supplementary Figure 11, Supplementary  Table 8, and the heat maps (Supplementary Figures 8-10)].

DISCUSSION
In our study, we found that the processing of any type of sketchnotes where verbal information is combined with nonverbal differs significantly from the processing of the verbal text.
These results correlate with the previous studies that showed that an image and a written text presented together can contribute to a better understanding of the information than if they are presented separately (Schnotz, 2005) and with the CTML (Mayer, 2009) that assumes that a multimodal text is an effective form of learning as it implicates switching of attention between a text and an image and establishes links between the two elements. The socalled multimedia effect helps to integrate the new information in the cognitive system and to remember it.
As it was shown in numerous eye-tracking studies, a text is read according to the F-shaped scanning pattern which is characterized by many fixations concentrated at the top-left part of the screen (Pernice, 2017). We got the same results for the processing of the biography presented as a verbal text. There were more gazes on the first lines than on the subsequent ones. The first several words on the left of each line received more fixations than subsequent words in the same line (Supplementary Figure 12). For all the sketchnotes we analyzed, the reading patterns were usually text-directed. This result correlates with other studies of polycode texts that showed that the text zones receive more attention than the picture zones (Rayner et al., 2001;Petrova and Riekhakaynen, 2019). Lee and Wu (2017) have also shown that a picture or a geometric figure attracts less reader's attention than a text in the process of scanning math texts. Although the sketchnotes we analyzed represented three different types of information organization, we did not find any significant differences in the time of their processing and, the number of fixations, subjective evaluation, and the number of correct answers to the after-the-text questions. However, while processing the trajectory sketchnotes the participants followed the order of reading aimed by the author better than while processing the linear and radial sketchnotes. We presume that, despite the fact that the participants did not pay much attention to the zones with small arrows that were numerous in the trajectory sketch (there were few fixations on them), these arrows helped not to deviate. We also did find some differences in the average fixation duration between the sketchnotes we analyzed. These results require further consideration, but we presume that the factors influencing the average fixation duration include the font size, the number of pictures in the texts, as well as the individual strategies of participants.
Our results also allow to discuss some basic principles of the polycode text structure. Although the pictures usually attract less attention than the verbal text containing the same information, the portraits of the main characters are normally scanned more attentively than other images. This finding is close to some recent face recognition eye-tracking studies and recommendations to use portraits and pictures of a person's face in order to increase reader's attention to a website (Patel, 2014) and banner advertisements (Sajjacholapunt and Ball, 2014). At the same time, the results we got on how a reader scan the titles of the sketchnotes do not correspond to the prior studies that showed that readers paid more attention to headings (e.g. Hyönä et al., 2002;Hyönä and Lorch, 2004;Lemarié et al., 2012) and found them useful when reading a text (Hartley and Trueman, 1985;Yussen et al., 1993), encoding the topic-comment structure of a text and recalling the text content (Lorch and Lorch, 1995).
It was revealed that different types of headings influence the process of searching the text and the sequence of examination of text elements (Klusewitz and Lorch, 2000). Our results show that the participants do not pay much attention to the title zones. However, we still believe that the headings are helpful for finding the target information in the text and can be used to guide the process of examining the text or sketch. According to the results we received, to attract more attention the title in a polycode text should be somehow included in the overall structure of the sketchnotes or should be placed in non-standard way.

CONCLUSION
Reading is a complex task that depends on many different cognitive processes. Numerous experiments have shown that text understanding is a complex multistep process. The comprehension of a written text includes -among othersthe recognition and pattern analysis of letters, graphics, and structural components. Recent cognitive-orientated research shows that the text type is among the readability categories. The aim of the present study was to reveal whether a sketch or a verbal text is easier to process and better to use for retrieving the essential information.
Eye-tracking studies of the processing of Russian texts are not numerous. They are mainly focused on the recognition of a regular verbal text (Bezrukikh and Ivanov, 2013, 2014Kornev et al., 2014;Petrova, 2016;Korneev et al., 2017a,b). There is only one eye-tracking research on Russian (Petrova and Riekhakaynen, 2019) in which the processing of a polycode text, namely infographics, has been studied. It was one of the first steps to reveal how readers integrate text-figure information when reading and understanding infographics.
The results of the present study have shown that a sketch of any format is read faster than a verbal text. It is worth mentioning that the percentages of correct answers to the after-the-text questions are normally higher after processing sketchnotes than after reading a verbal text. The trajectory (path) seems to be the most efficient type of sketchnoting because it clearly shows a reader the order of reading aimed by the author of the sketchnotes.
The analysis of participants' eye movements while processing the stimuli allowed us to propose a number of recommendations for creating sketchnotes: (1) diagonal position of the text is not efficient because such zones are read significantly slower than the zones where the text is arranged horizontally; (2) it is better to control the reader's attention with the arrows as they show the order of acquiring the information presumed by the author of a sketch and thus help to learn the text faster; and (3) it is important to duplicate the information from the title somewhere inside the sketchnotes or to integrate the title into the sketch to attract reader's attention to it.
We suppose that visual notes can be a functional alternative of a traditional verbal summary and this format can diversify the educational process. It is possible to recommend using sketchnoting as an alternative way of processing large blocks of information, when a reader can decide himself what type of summary to choose. The data obtained open perspectives for further investigation of the reading process, means of resolving ambiguity in the different text types, and the relationship between verbal and non-verbal parts of the text.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/Supplementary Material.

ETHICS STATEMENT
The experiment was conducted in July 2018 at the Educational Centre "Sirius" (Sochi, Russia) in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the existing Russian and international regulations concerning ethics in research. It was approved by the Ethics Committee of Saint-Petersburg State University in June 2018. As the participants were under 18 years old, we obtained written informed consents for their participation in the experiment from their parents.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
TP: main idea, data collection for the experiments, introduction, and discussion. ER: the eye-tracking experiment and analysis of the results, figures, and tables. VB: choosing the stimuli, data collection, and creating sketchnotes. All authors contributed to the research and to the manuscript, and agreed to be accountable for the content of the work.

FUNDING
This study was supported by the research grant no. 18-00-00640 "Linguistic information processing under ambiguity: activation and competition of variants" from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.