The overarching goal of our project is to design effective learning activities for PyKinetic, a smartphone Python tutor. In this paper, we present a study using a variant of Parsons problems we designed for PyKinetic. Parsons problems contain randomized code which needs to be re-ordered to produce the desired effect. In our variant of Parsons…

Drawing on cognitive theories, this study intends to investigate the effects of explicit visual cues which have been proposed as a critical factor in facilitating understanding of biological images. Three diagrams from Taiwanese textbooks with implicit visual cues, involving the concepts of biological classification systems, fish taxonomy, and…

Writing transfer research often illuminates the writing abilities, attitudes, and assumptions college writers bring to a writing assignment, but faculty members across the disciplines may not have the tools for understanding what the students in their particular classes bring to their particular writing assignments. In this proposed model,…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

Our study contributes to our understanding of Internet reading by Emergent Bilinguals (EB) and Native English speakers (NS) by investigating their recall of two Internet reading passages containing additional information available through either hypertext links or footnotes. Participants included 25 EB and 25 NS college students. Answers to cued…