Background: Engineering students commonly learn domain knowledge by engaging with visual representations of it. However, at times they have trouble accessing information from these representations due to the way information is encoded in features of the representation. Purpose: To describe how students engage with representation features, we…

This study reports the effects of using word clouds to support students' knowledge integration from online inquiry as demonstrated by blog posts, tags and concept maps. Fifty-four undergraduate students from a medium-sized university in the northwestern United States were randomly assigned into two groups and blogged for five weeks. To support…

Mastering the many different diagrammatic representations of molecules used in organic chemistry is challenging for students. This article summarizes recent research showing that manipulating 3-D molecular models can facilitate the understanding and use of these representations. Results indicate that students are more successful in translating…

Many recent technologies provide the ability to dynamically adjust the interface depending on the emerging cognitive and collaborative needs of the learning episode. This means that educators can adaptively re-design the learning environment during the lesson, rather than purely relying on preemptive learning design thinking. Based on a…

University education often suffers from a lack of an explicit and adaptable didactic design. Students complain about the insufficient adaptability to the learners' needs. Learning content and services need to reach their audience according to their different prerequisites, needs, and different learning styles and conditions. A way to overcome such…