Do people think about genetic inheritance as a deterministic or probabilistic process? Do adults display systematic biases when reasoning about genetic inheritance? Knowing how adults think about genetic inheritance is valuable, both for understanding the developmental endpoint of these concepts and for identifying biases that persist even after…

One expected outcome of physics instruction is for students to be capable of relating physical concepts to multiple mathematical representations. In quantum mechanics (QM), students are asked to work across multiple symbolic notations, including some they have not previously encountered. To investigate student understanding of the relationships…

The ability to relate physical concepts and phenomena to multiple mathematical representations--and to move fluidly between these representations--is a critical outcome expected of physics instruction. In upper-division quantum mechanics, students must work with multiple symbolic notations, including some that they have not previously encountered.…

Help-seeking is uncommon among college students with substance use concerns. Perceived access to services is associated with greater help-seeking behavior. This study identifies substance use-related risk factors associated with awareness of campus counseling services. College students aged 18 to 25 (N = 995) self-administered a web-based survey,…

Evolutionary theory explains a wide range of biological phenomena. Proper understanding of evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection is therefore an essential goal for biology education. Unfortunately, natural selection has time and again proven difficult to teach and learn, and students' resulting understanding is often characterized by…

Various solving strategies in probability of events could complicate the students in choosing the best strategy in problem solutions. This research was carried out to identify the favourite solving strategies used by college students to solve probability and event problems. As a preliminary of a case study, only three students were selected as…

One factor in reducing the likelihood of sports-related brain injuries is the recognition of risks. However, using colloquial terms may deemphasize the severity of these risks. We hypothesized that using colloquial language to describe sports-related brain injuries will lead to greater willingness to take on the risk. We conducted two experiments,…

Visuospatial attention prioritizes regions of space for perceptual processing. Knowing how attended locations are represented is critical for understanding the architecture of attention. We examined the spatial reference frame of incidentally learned attention and asked how it is influenced by explicit, top-down knowledge. Participants performed a…

Using a data set that augments a student survey with administrative data from the Iowa State University Office of Financial Aid, the authors posed two questions: Do students know whether they have student loans? Do students know how much they owe on outstanding student loans? We used logistic and ordered logit regressions to answer these…

As part of an ongoing investigation of students' learning in first semester upper-division quantum mechanics, we needed a high-quality conceptual assessment instrument for comparing outcomes of different curricular approaches. The process of developing such a tool started with converting a preliminary version of a 14-item open-ended quantum…

Plagiarism appears to be a common problem among college students, yet there is little evidence on the effectiveness of interventions designed to minimize plagiarism. This study presents the results of a field experiment that evaluated the effects of a web-based educational tutorial in reducing plagiarism. We found that assignment to the treatment…

Analysis of survey data collected from 6,520 students at a large Midwestern University affirmed that financial knowledge is a significant factor in the credit card decisions of college students but not entirely in expected ways. Results of a double hurdle analysis indicated that students with relatively higher levels of financial knowledge were…

A theoretical model is proposed for confidence in knowledge based on the assumption that people are good judges of the reliability of their knowledge, provided that the knowledge is representatively sampled from a specified reference class as defined by E. Brunswik (1943). Experiments with 177 college students support the theory. (SLD)

This is a record of the proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA). The theme of the conference is "Mathematics: Essential research, essential practice." The theme draws attention to the importance of developing and maintaining links between research and practice and…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…