Diagnostic competences are an essential facet of teacher competence. Many studies have investigated the "quality" of teachers' judgments of students' competences. However, little is known about the processes that lead to these judgments and about the ways to promote these processes in the early phase of teacher training. The aim of the…

This work is part of a research project that aims to enhance engineering students' learning of how to apply mathematics in modelling activities of real-world situations, through the construction (design and programming) of videogames. We want also for students to relate their mathematical knowledge with other disciplines (e.g., physics, computer…

The study explores the development of 11-year-old students' informal inference about random bunny hops through student talk and use of computer simulation tools. Our aim in this paper is to draw on dialogic theory to explain how students make shifts in perspective, from intuition-based reasoning to more powerful, formal ways of using probabilistic…

The goal of this paper is to promote computational thinking among mathematics, engineering, science and technology students, through hands-on computer experiments. These activities have the potential to empower students to learn, create and invent with technology, and they engage computational thinking through simulations, visualizations and data…

When a two-dimensional (2D) traveling salesman problem (TSP) is presented on a computer screen, human subjects can produce near-optimal tours in linear time. In this study we tested human performance on a real and virtual floor, as well as in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual space. Human performance on the real floor is as good as that on a…

Hands-on practical work in physics and engineering has a long and well-established tradition in Australian universities. Recently, however, the question of whether hands-on physics and engineering practicals are useful for engineering students and whether they could be deleted or whether these could be replaced with computer simulations has been…

Data structures and algorithms are core issues in computer programming. However, learning them is challenging for most students and many of them have various types of misconceptions on how algorithms work. In this study, we discuss the problem of identifying misconceptions on the principles of how algorithms work. Our context is algorithm…