Context personalization--the incorporation of students' out-of-school interests into learning tasks--has recently been shown to positively affect students' situational interest and their performance and learning in mathematics. However, few studies have shown effects on both interest and achievement, drawing into question whether context…

Mastery behaviours -- seeking out challenging tasks and continuing to work on them despite difficulties -- are integral to achievement but difficult to measure with precision. The current study reports on the development and validation of the computer-based persistence, effort, resilience, and challenge-seeking (PERC) task in two demographically…

Collaboration scripts have repeatedly been implemented in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) to facilitate collaboration processes and individual learning. However, finding the right degree of structure is a subtle design task: scripts that are too rigid may impair self-regulation and hinder learning; scripts that are too flexible…

Research on the seductive details effect on reading expository texts in multimedia learning environments has grown over the past few decades. However, less is known when seductive details are encountered in learning through worked-examples to solve problems. Thus, it is necessary to examine the seductive details effect when solving problems in a…

Sometimes Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) offer an answer that is somewhat different from the answer that is probably expected by the student or teacher. These (somewhat unexpected) answers could serve as a catalyst for rich mathematical discussion. In this study, over 120 equations from school mathematics were solved using 8 different CAS. Many…

Researchers have indicated that the collaborative problem-solving space afforded by the collaborative systems significantly impact the problem-solving process. However, recent investigations into collaborative simulations, which allow a group of students to jointly manipulate a problem in a shared problem space, have yielded divergent results…

Collaborative problem solving in computer-supported environments is of critical importance to the modern workforce. Coworkers or collaborators must be able to co-create and navigate a shared problem space using discourse and non-verbal cues. Analyzing this discourse can give insights into how consensus is reached and can estimate the depth of…

This experimental study investigated the effects of the use of two versions of a pedagogical agent named personal instructing agent (PIA) on the mathematics performance of students. The first version exhibits synthetic facial expressions while the second version does not exhibit facial expression (i.e., neutral facial expression). Two groups of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a quantitative model of problem solving performance of students in the computer-based mathematics learning environment. Design/methodology/approach: Regularized logistic regression was used to create a quantitative model of problem solving performance of students that predicts whether students can…

VS-TM refers to a teaching model that applies virtual media aided scientific approach. VS-TM is required to prepare students who are trained problem-solving process through scientific creative thinking opportunities and complete physics concept mastery. The aim of this research is to analyze the effectiveness of VS-TM to improve student's…

This paper gives an example of how computer-based problem-solving scenarios can be embedded in a course on sustainability, in order to illustrate the highly versatile way in which such scenarios can be used to structure and evaluate learning on complexity on an individual level, as well as learning in diverse groups. After defining criteria, a…

Group formation task as a starting point for computer-supported collaborative learning plays a key role in achieving pedagogical goals. Various approaches have been reported in the literature to address this problem, but none have offered an optimal solution. In this research, an online learning environment was modeled as a weighted undirected…

For primary school students, mathematical word problems are often more difficult to solve than straightforward number problems. Word problems require reading and analysis skills, and in order to explain their situational contexts, the proper mathematical knowledge and number operations have to be selected. To improve students' ability in solving…

This thesis explores two case studies into the use of short answers and self-explanation to improve student learning in physics. The first set of experiments focuses on the role of short answer questions in the context of computer-based instruction. Through a series of six experiments, we compare and evaluate the performance of computer-assessed…

A picture is worth more than a thousand words--in mathematics too. Many students fail in learning mathematics because, in some cases, teachers do not offer the necessary visualization. Nowadays technology overcomes this problem: computer aided instruction is one of the most efficients methods in teaching mathematics. In this article we try to…