This study explores the relationship between the Spiral Dynamics and the 3H (head, heart, hands) models of human growth and development, using constructs such as empathy, moral reasoning, forgiveness, and community mindedness that have been shown to have implications for education. The specific research question is, "Can a combination of…

When we read, errors in oculomotor programming can cause the eyes to land and fixate on different words from what the mind intended. Previous work suggests that these "mislocated fixations" form 10-30% of first-pass fixations in reading eye movement data, which presents theoretical and analytic issues for eyetracking-while-reading…

This study aims to examine the effects of mixture item response theory (IRT) models on item parameter estimation and classification accuracy under different conditions. The manipulated variables of the simulation study are set as mixture IRT models (Rasch, 2PL, 3PL); sample size (600, 1000); the number of items (10, 30); the number of latent…

Many introductory astronomy courses include concepts related to basic stellar properties. In general, these are concepts that originate from the human perception of starlight. This observational aspect is not easy to incorporate in the classroom. We explore if these concepts could be developed using the built-in data in a planetarium software.…

The complex and dynamic nature of collaboration makes it challenging to find indicators of productive learning and quality collaboration. This exploratory study developed a collaboration metric to capture temporal patterns of joint attention (JA) based on log files generated as students interacted with an immersive astronomy simulation using…

This article presents and analyzes existing taxonomies of virtual and augmented reality and demonstrates knowledge gaps and mixed terminology, which may cause confusion among educators, researchers, and developers. Several such occasions of confusion are presented. A methodology is then presented to construct a taxonomy of virtual reality and…

About 45 R packages to analyze data using item response theory (IRT) have been developed over the last decade. This article introduces these 45 R packages with their descriptions and features. It also describes possible advanced IRT models using R packages, as well as dichotomous and polytomous IRT models, and R packages that contain applications…

With the increase in distance and online teaching for mainstream schooling contexts, the advocacy of using a virtual world as a teaching and learning place has accelerated. Currently, there is no empirical evidence revealing the pedagogical elements defining teacher practices in virtual settings. This article reports on an exploratory study which…

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is gaining traction in K12 education. Whereas well-designed and engaging VR experiences may be considered educational, teacher educators with content-area expertise are uniquely positioned to analyze the actual content provided by those experiences when determining VR's educational value.…

We review the GIDNA and CDM packages in R for fitting cognitive diagnosis/diagnostic classification models. We first provide a summary of their core capabilities and then use both simulated and real data to compare their functionalities in practice. We found that the most relevant routines in the two packages appear to be more similar than…

Digital products are rapidly shaping our world into a ubiquitous computing world. Because of its unique characteristics, digital artifacts are generative and highly evolving through the recombination of existing elements as well as by the invention of new elements. In this thesis, I first propose an evolutionary view to examine how digital…

In this article, we propose the concept of "Autonomic Cycle Of Learning Analysis Tasks" (ACOLAT), which defines a set of tasks of learning analysis, whose objective is to improve the learning process. The data analysis has become a fundamental area for the knowledge discovery from data extracted from different sources. In the autonomic…

The random-threshold generalized unfolding model (RTGUM) was developed by treating the thresholds in the generalized unfolding model as random effects rather than fixed effects to account for the subjective nature of the selection of categories in Likert items. The parameters of the new model can be estimated with the JAGS (Just Another Gibbs…

Since the mid-1990s, however, the popularity, diversity, and application of virtual worlds have spread rapidly. As a result, existing taxonomies and topologies increasingly are becoming less effective at being able to classify and organize the growing diversification of content available in today's virtual worlds. This article presents the…

This research demonstrates how affect control theory and its computer program, "Interact", can be used to develop empirically-grounded hypotheses regarding the connection between cultural labels and behaviors. Our demonstration focuses on propositions in the modified labeling theory of mental illness. According to the MLT, negative societal…