This study examined whether answering focused explanative questions during pauses in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) lesson on pipetting procedures could enhance learning. The goal was to take a generative learning activity, known to be effective for declarative knowledge with conventional media, to the context of procedural knowledge with…

Blogs are useful interaction tools to promote learners' knowledge construction and interaction in online teaching activities. On the other hand, although many studies show that mindtools facilitate learners' cognitive process, little research focus on their effects on learners' higher order cognitive thinking in blogs. This research developed a…

Up to now, only a few studies in multimedia learning have focused on gender effects. While research has mostly focused on learning success, the effect of gender on instructional efficiency (IE) has not yet been considered. Consequently, we used a quasi-experimental design to examine possible gender differences in the learning success, mental…

Following a design-based research framework, this article reports two empirical studies with an educational MMOG, called "McLarin's Adventures," on facilitating 9th-grade students' complex problem-solving skill acquisition in interdisciplinary STEM education. The article discusses the nature of complex and ill-structured problem solving…

This study has important implications for microworlds such as Logo, HyperGami, and Newton's World, which use interaction to learn spatial mental models for science, math, geometry, etc. This study tested the hypothesis that interactively rotating (dragging) virtual shapes primes mental rotation. The independent variable was observation vs.…

Describes how 2 10-year olds developed drawings and numeral systems to symbolize their mental operations while dividing unit bars into thirds and fourths using TIMA: Bars, a computer microworld, as a medium for enacting mathematical actions. The symbolic nature of their partitioning operations was crucial in establishing more conventional…

A "science of e-learning" involves the scientific investigation of how people learn in electronic learning environments. Three elements of a science of e-learning are: a) "evidence"--a base of replicated findings from rigorous and appropriate research studies; b) "theory"--a research-based theory of how people learn in electronic learning…

In this review of the research on how current computer learning environments can foster the acquisition of complex cognitive skills, two issues emerge: (1) what cognitive accomplishments are likely in the computer environment; and (2) what factors predispose students to benefit from the environment. (MBR)