Design thinking and virtual reality continue to infiltrate the K-12 landscape, with incredible promise for fostering deeper engagement with content. Design thinking in particular embodies maker education's beliefs in learning through building, but with the added caveat of solving real-world problems with the consideration of others' perspectives.…

As a person obsessed, perhaps overly so, with preventing water damage, an ailing dishwasher led to a system whereby who did the dishes in our household became a matter of chance. What happened next, however, was besmirchment of my character from hockey teammates, close friends, and especially from a room full of future elementary school…

Tychonov's 1935 solution of the heat equation, exhibiting nontrivial heat fluxes spontaneously appearing along an isolated conducting rod initially held at zero degrees, has intrigued some specialists for almost a century. No doubt those practicing heat engineers who took mathematics seriously were initially relieved to learn that the construction…

Recently, the field of adaptive learning has significantly attracted researchers' interest. Learning path adaptation problem (LPA) is one of the most challenging problems within this field. It is also a well-known combinatorial optimization problem, its main target is the knowledge resources sequencing offered to a specific learner with a specific…

The architecture of the micro-learning platform mixed with gamification via metaverse is a research tool that was initiated by the concepts of micro-learning integrated with the gamification mechanism. It is intended to be employed as a guideline for the instruction management that encourages learners to perform self-learning with small or short…

Background: Problem-solving competences have evolved into key skills for professionals. Computer-based business simulations enable the analysis of problem-solving processes beyond end results. An important aspect of successful problem-solving is to systematically use built-in tools and process the provided information efficiently. Objectives: This…

Capacities for abstract thinking and problem-solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in…

Socially shared metacognition is important for effective collaborative problem solving in virtual laboratory settings, A holistic account of socially shared metacognition in virtual laboratory settings is needed to advance our understanding, but previous studies have only focused on the isolated effect of each dimension on problem solving. This…

It is crucial nowadays to predict in a fast and simple manner physical-chemical behaviors like, the size-dependent optical properties of gold nanospheres (Au NSs). The idea behind this experiment is trying to replace (as much as possible) robust and expensive microscopy techniques with UV-vis spectrophotometry and friendly simulations. Students…

This paper describes two examples of teaching situations in which the idea of infinity arises, and supports the conclusion that infinity is not a physical reality but a very powerful and useful mathematical device which facilitates modelling and the solution of problems in physics.

In response to the adoption of Agile practices and processes by businesses, IT/IS educators are working to add Agile content to their courses. Teaching students about Agile involves teaching them about the history, mindset, and values of Agile, along with an introduction to the practices and processes used in an Agile product. Along with this, it…

A newly-developed online laboratory experiment in immersive virtual reality (VR) is used for process engineering students. A digital twin (DT) of a jet pump was realised using the game engine Unreal Engine 4. The chance was taken for an instructional redesign deviating from the conventional cookbook-experiment to better integrate the changing…

The ability to reason about how things were made is a pervasive aspect of how humans make sense of physical objects. Such reasoning is useful for a range of everyday tasks, from assembling a piece of furniture to making a sandwich and knitting a sweater. What enables people to reason in this way even about novel objects, and how do people draw…

Background: Cultivating students' problem-solving knowledge and skills in the workspace has been regarded as a primary goal in technical and vocational education. To this end, students are usually guided to complete the learning of workspace knowledge and skills by following the question, prompt, interaction and evaluation (QPIE) procedure.…

The increasing ubiquity of gamification in everyday life normalizes it as a motivational tool. While much scholarship supports gamification, labor sociologists have long problematized the phenomenon. In this mixed-methods action research study, we explore the results of gamifying a lesson on gamification in a sociology of work course. We designed…