The use of "MapleTA"[R] in the assessment of engineering mathematics at Liverpool John Moores University (JMU) is discussed with particular reference to the design of questions. Key aspects in the formulation and coding of questions are considered. Problems associated with the submission of symbolic answers, the use of randomly generated numbers…

The learning object remains an ill-defined concept, despite numerous and extensive discussion in the literature. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a classification that potentially brings together various perspectives of what a learning object may be. Six unique types of learning objects are proposed and discussed:…

The purpose of this study was to describe how male, collegiate, certified athletic trainers (AT's) represent knowledge during 5 injury evaluation scenarios. A second purpose of the study was to identify what self-regulatory behaviors participants engaged in to improve or maintain their skills. Knowledge representation was studied as cue selection…

There is no agreement about the robustness of intuitive representations of the circulatory system and their susceptibility to change by instruction. In this paper, we analyse to what extent students with varying degrees of biology instruction and different ages (High School Health Science and Social Science students and first and final year…

This paper explores the use of design patterns and anti-patterns in teaching human-computer interaction principles. Patterns are increasingly popular and are seen as an efficient knowledge transfer mechanism in many fields, including software development in the field of software engineering, and more recently in the field of human-computer…

This article explores the potential learning benefits of three-dimensional (3-D) virtual learning environments (VLEs). Drawing on published research spanning two decades, it identifies a set of unique characteristics of 3-D VLEs, which includes aspects of their representational fidelity and aspects of the learner-computer interactivity they…

How is knowledge represented and organized in the mind? What role does it play in discourse comprehension and interpretation? What are the exact mechanisms whereby knowledge-based processes are utilised in comprehension? These are questions that have puzzled psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists for years. Despite major developments in the…

We review significant empirical studies of the arithmetic abilities of children with dyslexia. These studies suggest that the academic impairments of children with dyslexia are not limited to reading and spelling, but also include aspects of mathematics. A consistent finding across a number of studies is that children with dyslexia have difficulty…

An educational assessment embodies an argument from a handful of observations of what students say, do or make in a handful of particular circumstances, to what they know or can do in what kinds of situations more broadly. This article discusses ways in which research into the nature and development of expertise can help assessment designers…

This study examined age differences in children's vulnerability to be misled by two types of false overheard rumors, namely a rumor that suggested a reasonable explanation for an earlier unresolved experience and a rumor that suggested an explanation that conflicted with information already in memory. Results indicated that all of the children…

Policy problems like "What should we do about global warming?" are ill-defined in large part because we do not agree on a system to represent them the way we agree Algebra problems should be represented by equations. As a first step toward building a policy deliberation tutor, we investigated: (a) whether causal diagrams help students learn to…

In his 1979 "Human Development" article reprinted in this anniversary issue, James Wertsch presented an approach to genetic analysis of the shifting regulation of problem-solving behavior in early childhood. In my reflections on Wertsch's seminal contribution, I discuss ways that subsequent inquiry built upon ideas he elaborated in the…

Narrative and story telling has a long history of use in structuring, organising and communicating human experience. This paper describes a narrative based interactive intelligent learning environment which aims to elucidate practical reasoning using interactive emergent narratives that can be used in training novices in decision making. Its…

Change and complexity are creating a need for increasing levels of literacy in science and technology. Presently, we are beginning to provide students with clear contexts in which to learn, including clearly written text, visual displays and maps, and more effective instruction. We are also beginning to give students tools that promote their own…

The authors present a computational model that builds a holographic lexicon representing both word meaning and word order from unsupervised experience with natural language. The model uses simple convolution and superposition mechanisms to learn distributed holographic representations for words. The structure of the resulting lexicon can account…