A variety of practices and specialised representational systems are required to understand, communicate and construct molecular genetics knowledge. This study describes teachers' use of multimodal representations of molecular genetics concepts and how their strategies and choice of resources were interpreted, understood and used by students to…

The impact of touch-screen technology on spatial cognitive skills as related to molecular geometries was assessed through 102 one-on-one interviews with undergraduate students. Participants were provided with either printed 2D ball-and-stick images of molecules or manipulable projections of 3D molecular structures on an iPad. Following a brief…

The heart of learning chemistry is the ability to connect a compound's structure to its function; Lewis structures provide an essential link in this process. In many cases, their construction is taught using an algorithmic approach, containing a set of step-by-step rules. We believe that this approach is in direct conflict with the precepts of…

The purpose of this thesis is to improve our understanding of sensemaking process as a basis for building better systems to assist sensemaking. Sensemaking is the task of creating an understanding of a problem or task so that further actions may be taken in an informed manner. Sensemaking is a pre-requisite for many other tasks such as decision…

The purpose of this study was to describe how male, collegiate, certified athletic trainers (AT's) represent knowledge during 5 injury evaluation scenarios. A second purpose of the study was to identify what self-regulatory behaviors participants engaged in to improve or maintain their skills. Knowledge representation was studied as cue selection…

This paper focuses on the different ways in which students in lower secondary school (14-16 year olds) experience compound random events, presented to them in the form of combined junctions. A carefully designed ICT environment was developed enabling the students to interact with different representations of such structures. Data for the analysis…

One of the purposes of knowledge generation at the higher education level is the creation of expertise. However, the mental structures that an expert uses to process information are not generally considered. Instead, information alone is presented to the learner and it is hoped that he or she will somehow integrate this information into knowledge…