The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact explicit teaching of metacognition had on preservice teachers' metacognitive awareness and accuracy of whole group discussions using virtual simulations. One class of preservice teachers was randomly assigned to the explicit metacognitive teaching group, while the other class was assigned to…

Risk-free micro-teaching affords an opportunity for pre-service teachers (PTs) to practice teaching and student engagement techniques outside of a traditional classroom setting. More time to practice teaching is often an expressed desire of PTs. Orchestrating time to practice teaching techniques learned in pedagogy courses is a difficult…

In an immersive virtual reality (IVR) environment, this study investigated: (1) the role of learner characteristics in various learning and psychological outcomes, including knowledge retention, perceived learning, cognitive load, self-efficacy, enjoyment, presence, and usefulness; and (2) the relationship among these intended outcomes. Forty…

The rise of online courses has created an ongoing demand for instructional designers in higher education. Collaboration between faculty and instructional designers in developing online engineering courses has therefore increased. Potential challenges during the collaboration can be addressed when faculty and instructional designers have a mutual…

Since the advent of Second Life in 2004, immersive virtual-reality (VR) environments have been readily available to educators; more recent open-source environments have reduced costs significantly. This study reports on data gathered from an avatar-based immersive experience where teacher-education students gathered in VR spaces for synchronous…

The purpose of this research was to explore the use of virtual reality (VR) in early design studios. In this research project, two different types of Head-Mounted Display (HMD) systems were used. One type of HMD provided six degrees of freedom and the other HMD provided three degrees of freedom. The research findings provide comparison on the…

With an increase in the number of colleges and universities using virtual reality and augmented reality integrated programs, specific insight for exploring immersive learning approaches utilizing virtual and augmented reality tools and applications in a variety of disciplines is needed. In some instances, pedagogical approaches for creating…

Using multicultural children's literature is one way to help preservice teachers build cultural knowledge and awareness about diversity. Another possible practice, not commonly used, is the addition of emerging technology in conjunction with conventional instructional approaches. In this article, we reviewed incorporating a lesson about…

This article describes how virtualization technology can provide a solution to the difficulties in teaching, learning, and assessing students' performance in computer networking subjects. The focus of this article is to show how virtualization technology can provide students with hands-on practice, can largely reduce the need for physical…

We place collaborative student engagement in a nontraditional perspective by considering a novel, more interactive educational environment and explaining how to employ it to enhance student learning. To this end, we explore modern technological classroom enhancements as well as novel pedagogical techniques which facilitate collaborative learning.…

In this increasingly digital age, student plagiarism is rampant. Roughly half of college students admit to plagiarizing using content found online, directly copying and pasting the work of others. Digital technology and social media have greatly changed the landscape of how knowledge is acquired and disseminated; thus, students must be explicitly…

With the advent of open source virtual environments, the associated cost reductions, and the more flexible options, avatar-based virtual reality environments are within reach of educators. By using and repurposing readily available virtual environments, instructors can bring engaging, community-building, and immersive learning opportunities to…

Computer simulations can provide guided practice for a variety of situations that pre-service teachers would not frequently experience during their teacher education studies. Pre-service teachers can use simulations to turn the knowledge they have gained in their coursework into real experience. Teacher simulation training has come a long way over…

We describe the development and evaluation of a virtual steel sculpture for engineering education. A good connection design requires the engineer to have a solid understanding of the mechanics and steel behavior. To help students better understand various connection types, many schools have acquired steel sculptures. A steel sculpture is a…

Opening with the history, recent advances, and emerging ways to use avatar-based virtual reality, an instructor who has used virtual environments since 2007 shares how these environments bring more options to community building, teaching, and education. With the open-source movement, where the source code for virtual environments was made…