With digitisation and the rise of e-learning have come a range of computational tools and approaches that have allowed educators to better support the learners' experience in schools, colleges and universities. The move away from traditional paper-based course materials, registration, admissions and support services to the mobile, always-on and…

This study investigated conditions for optimizing college students' analogical problem solving. Students given pictorial (not verbal) representations of solutions to source problems were better problem solvers, as were students given a longer time. Students who derived personal solution principles to source problems were not superior to students…

Five experiments involving a total of 44 college students addressed the effects of intercomponent consistency on skill acquisition in a class of cognitively demanding tasks requiring rapid integration of information and rapid application of rules. The role of consistency of external stimulus-to-rule linkage in facilitating learning and performing…

Explains a generative theory of textbook design and describes three experiments that compared college students' solutions on transfer problems after reading science texts with illustrations adjacent to corresponding text and including annotations, and illustrations separated from text without annotations. (LRW)

Discusses the interconnection among the various modes of the TI-92 calculator (geometry, data graphing, function graphing, and algebra) and how the power of visualization is extended to provide multiple approaches to complex problem situations. Provides a graphing problem with illustrations and results. (AIM)

Two studies were conducted to describe how students perform direct current (D-C) circuit problems. It was hypothesized that problem solving in the electricity domain depends largely on good visual processing of the circuit diagram and that this processing depends on the ability to recognize when two or more electrical components are in series or…

One aim of this study was to identify, in a group of unsuccessful college level problem solvers, the status and use of their declarative knowledge as revealed by students' attempts to solve novel problems in a pencil-and-paper setting. It was hypothesized that for some unsuccessful problem solvers, their problem representation could be improved by…