The author outlines a classroom tariff-setting game that allows students to explore the consequences of import tariffs imposed by large countries (countries able to influence world prices). Groups of students represent countries, which are organized into trading pairs. Each group's objective is to maximize welfare by choosing an appropriate ad…

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability…

Paired associates and serial list memory are typically investigated separately. An "isolation principle" (J. B. Caplan, 2005) was proposed to explain behavior in both paradigms by using a single model, in which serial list and paired associates memory differ only in how isolated pairs of items are from interference from other studied items. In…

State revenue currently flows to California school districts through so many channels that it is difficult to determine why some districts receive more funding than others. Each revenue program also has its own restrictions on the use of funds, reducing the latitude of school districts to use state funds most effectively. An alternative,…

This paper is based on the experience acquired in teaching materials science/engineering to first year university students. It has been observed that students struggle with some of the fundamental materials concepts addressed in the module/course. This applies to delivered lectures but extends to the incorporation of tutorial sessions provided…

This study investigated the collaborative decision-making and communicative discourse of groups of learners engaged in a simulated medical emergency in two conditions. In one condition subgroups used a traditional whiteboard (TW group) to document medical arguments on how to solve a medical emergency. In the other condition subgroups used…

This paper describes a set of simulations which explore the way different features of lexical organisation affect the probability of finding a pair of associated words in a set of five randomly selected words. The simulation is equivalent to giving Ss a set of five words and asking if they can identify a pair of associated words among them. The…

This study sought to determine the effect of simulation-games environment on students' achievement in attitudes to mathematics in secondary school. Data was collected from a sample of 147 students in senior secondary school in Osun-State, Nigeria. t-test and analysis of variance was used to analyze the data collected for the study. The finding…

In the past decade, providing language instruction via computer-mediated communication (CMC) has seen tremendous growth throughout the world. With this increase in asynchronous instruction have come questions concerning the role of the instructor as it determines the quality and impact of learning and of what optimal faculty development might…

We develop the view that inflection is driven partly by non-phonological analogy and that non-phonological information is of particular importance to the inflection of non-canonical roots, which in the view of [Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., & Pinker, S. (1995). "German inflection: the exception that proves the rule."…

This article discusses a simulation wherein learners of Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) in a business writing course at an American university are assigned tasks to write a series of business letters based on situations that are likely to occur in actual business settings. After an overview of the theoretical background, this article…

This article critically reflects on the GUN CONTROL simulation (Salies, 1994a) by retaking ideas advanced by Salies (2002) and applying them to the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing classes in Brazil. It examines how controlled practice relates to learners' performance on the first draft in a simulation-based content unit…

The purpose of the current article is to examine the impact of laboratory demonstrations and computer visualizations on learning in a third-year fluid mechanics course at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). As a first step, on entering the course, students were exposed to a laboratory demonstration focusing on the nature of…

Most researchers agree that psychological/educational tests are sensitive to multiple traits, implying the need for a multidimensional item response theory (MIRT). One limitation of applying a MIRT in practice is the difficulty in establishing equivalent scales of multiple traits. In this study, a new MIRT linking method was proposed and evaluated…

The impact of outliers on Cronbach's coefficient [alpha] has not been documented in the psychometric or statistical literature. This is an important gap because coefficient [alpha] is the most widely used measurement statistic in all of the social, educational, and health sciences. The impact of outliers on coefficient [alpha] is investigated for…