This paper outlines a comprehensive teaching laboratory course program that centers on titration analysis, a timeless and essential technique in analytical chemistry spanning various disciplines, such as environmental science, medicine, and industry. In these fields, titration analysis is paramount for determining the concentrations of substances…

This Article comes from a series of 2 h instrumental analysis laboratory experiments developed in response to social distancing requirements established because of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID). The experiments provided rich data-analysis opportunities that taught students the chemical principles that underpin instrumental techniques, yet made…

A virtual catalytic reactor laboratory (VCRL) experiment, which can be used in most browsers, is described. Students select feed conditions and use the VCRL to take data for a gas-phase catalytic reaction and fit kinetic parameters to a Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate expression. The VCRL contains instructions, equipment descriptions, an animated…

Embedded system is an interdisciplinary, profound foundation and practice-oriented course; at present, in the traditional teaching mode, embedded systems in colleges and universities generally have problems such as disconnected theory and practice, outdated assessment methods, and low enthusiasm of students. Arming to cultivate compound embedded…

Near-peer teaching, in which students one or more years removed from a student within the same academic program, is utilized broadly in medical school curricula and increasingly in undergraduate anatomy and physiology courses. While the literature on near-peer teaching suggests that the practice is overwhelmingly positive, it is primarily from…

This discussion paper for this special issue examines co-regulation of learning in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments extending research on self-regulated learning in computer-based environments. The discussion employs a socio-cognitive perspective focusing on social and collective views of learning to examine how…

This paper explores the hypothesis that embedding a laboratory activity into a virtual environment can provide a richer experimental context and hence improve the understanding of the relationship between a theoretical model and the real world, particularly in terms of the model's strengths and weaknesses. While an identified learning objective of…

In instructional communication settings, instructional explanations play an important role. Despite the very common use of instructional explanations, empirical studies show that very often, they have no positive effects on learning outcomes. This ineffectiveness might be due to mental passivity of the recipient learners that leads to shallow…

The current research article is based on a simple and practical way of employing the computational power of widely available, versatile software MS Excel 2007 to perform interactive computer simulations for undergraduate/graduate students in biology, biochemistry, biophysics, microbiology, medicine in college and university classroom setting. To…

Concept maps have been widely employed for helping students organise their knowledge as well as evaluating their knowledge structures in a wide range of subject matters. Although researchers have recognised concept maps as being an important educational tool, past experiences have also revealed the difficulty of evaluating the correctness of a…

The progress registered in the use of video games as educational tools has not yet been successfully transferred to the classroom. In an attempt to close this gap, a framework was developed that assists in the design and classroom integration of educational games. The framework addresses both the educational dimension and the ludic dimension. The…

In this paper we present a method for adaptive selection of test questions according to the individual needs of students within a web-based educational system. It functions as a combination of three particular methods. The first method is based on the course structure and focuses on the selection of the most appropriate topic for learning. The…

Animated pedagogical agents with characteristics such as facial expressions, gestures, and human emotions, under an interactive user interface are attractive to students and have high potential to promote students' learning. This study proposes a convenient method to add an embodied empathic avatar into a computer-aided learning program; learners…

This paper seeks to contribute new insight to the process of learning during idea generation (i.e., brainstorming) by proposing and evaluating two alternative operationalizations for learning, which we refer to as connection-based learning and multi-perspective learning, during a carefully designed idea-generation task in the earth-sciences…

This paper reports a series of experiments with text-to-speech (TTS) voices. These experiments have been conducted to develop audio materials for listening comprehension as an alternative technology to traditionally used audio equipment like the compact cassette. The new generation of TTS voices based on unit selection synthesis provides…