From the experiential learning perspective, this study investigates middle and high school students (n = 1009) who used an online module to learn about wildfire hazards, risks, and impacts through computational simulations of wildfire phenomena. These students were taught by 18 teachers in urban, rural, and suburban schools across the United…

This study focuses on an educational game titled "Cellverse," a two-player cross-platform VR project intended to teach high school biology students about cell structure and function. In "Cellverse," players work in pairs to explore a human lung cell and diagnose and treat a dangerous genetic disorder. "Cellverse" is…

Findings synthesized across five empirical, laboratory-and classroom-based studies of high school and college students engaged in geometric reasoning and proof production during single and multi-session investigations (346 participants overall) are presented. The findings converge on several design principles for embodied mathematical thinking and…

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic, digital learning environments have gained in importance in education all around the world. A new digital learning format called a "Digital Learning Module" (DLM) was developed within the Physics Education Research (PER) group at CERN, consisting of a series of prerecorded explanatory and experiment…

In this paper, we present the development of an investigation on the promotion of covariational reasoning in high school students (14-15 years old) in Mexico. The study consists of designing and applying a sequence of didactic activities that simulate a real situation virtually. The activities are organized through a Hypothetical Learning…

Digital, educational games have many promises (e.g., increasing students' content knowledge as well as competencies like problem-solving, spatial skills, and persistence). However, there are challenges to overcome before using these games more broadly in educational settings. One challenge involves identifying effective, theoretically based…

Economic inequality has reached historically high levels in both the United States and in the world. The research literature in sociology and political science has long shown that individuals tend to be very persistent in their views on the determinants of economic success, although these views may be formed on cultural and cognitive biases. For…

Digital games have a greater ease of construction of new meanings in a virtual world, more affordable, simple and comprehensible by the students than the real world, and in which the individual differences that occur in the real world tend to fade thanks to the interpretation of a character with different characteristics from the real ones.…

Skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are increasingly in demand. Theoretical knowledge and formulas alone are frequently not sufficient to understand complex phenomena. Simulations are a valuable tool to support the conceptual understanding by visualizing invisible processes. The constant interaction with the learning…

The combination of Open Sim and Scratch4OS can be a worthwhile innovation for introductory programming courses, using a Community of Inquiry (CoI) model as a theoretical instructional design framework. This empirical study had a threefold purpose to present: (a) an instructional design framework for the beneficial formalization of a virtual…

This research conducted quasi-experiments in four middle schools to evaluate the long-term effects of an intelligent web-based English instruction system, Computer Simulation in Educational Communication (CSIEC), on students' academic attainment. The analysis of regular examination scores and vocabulary test validates the positive impact of CSIEC,…

Growing science apathy at the K-12 education level represents an alarming development with potentially devastating consequences at individual, societal and economic levels. Technology has been incorporated in science education without fundamentally improving test scores or student attitudes. We claim the core of the problem is how technology is…

In K-12 classrooms, as well as on the college and university level, the incorporation of digital games has played a vital role in the educational system. While introducing teachers to new fields, these digital games have been designed and implemented for the classroom and have shown positive results at a variety of educational levels. Cases on…

Conversational technologies such as email, chat rooms, and blogs have made the transition from novel communication technologies to powerful tools for learning. Currently virtual worlds are undergoing the same transition. We argue that the next wave of innovation is at the level of the computer interface, and that mixed-reality environments offer…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…