Describes the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations (ICONS) Project that teachers college students about cross-cultural communication, including the role of foreign language in diplomacy and the complexities of the international system. Discusses the role playing element, Web-based communication between teams, active student…

Uses the various strategies involved in baseball to illustrate basic concepts in game theory. Specifically discusses Willie Mays' base-stealing strategy and how it relates to probability and risk. Reminds students that expected results depend on adopted assumptions. (MJP)

The Rainbow Connection Society at a community elementary magnet school in Lynn (Massachusetts) attempts to establish a schoolwide version of the best aspects of U.S. society in a school setting. A "microsociety" theme forms the hub of six educational strands and all facets of school programming. (SLD)

Two-level data sets are frequently encountered in social and behavioral science research. They arise when observations are drawn from a known hierarchical structure, as when individuals are randomly drawn from groups that are randomly drawn from a target population. When the covariance structures in the group level and the individual level are the…

As a science subject leader and year 6 teacher in North Bristol, the author has spent the last few months exploring how an interactive whiteboard (IWB) can be used to teach science skills, particularly those that are repeatedly highlighted as problematic, such as analysis and evaluation of evidence. The IWB came with software called…

This paper describes how information and communication technology (ICT) is used in the modular Open University course "T209 Information and Communication Technologies: People and Interactions", first presented in 2002. In this course ICT is used to provide students with practical experience and to support an active and collaborative approach to…

This paper is part of an investigation into 11-year-old students' interpretations of events in the environment. In particular, we analyse the use of a scale model constructed and manipulated by students when simulating a forest fire. We consider that their explanations involve the interrelation of three levels of organisation: the level at which…

In a very large Introductory Statistics class, i.e. in a class of more than 300 students, instructors may hesitate to apply active learning techniques, discouraged by the volume of extra work. In this paper two such activities are presented that evoke student involvement in the learning process. The first is group peer teaching and the second is…

Human sexuality is a significant issue for educators to understand and teach about, and for young people to learn about. The development of interactive multimedia technologies has added a range of new dimensions associated with designing pedagogies for sex education on Interactive Multimedia (IMM). Here, a module on CD-Rom on Sexuality and Human…

This article describes a simple and inexpensive hands-on simulation of protein folding suitable for use in large lecture classes. This activity uses a minimum of parts, tools, and skill to simulate some of the fundamental principles of protein folding. The major concepts targeted are that proteins begin as linear polypeptides and fold to…

A new, simple classroom technique helps cell biology students understand principles of Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics. A student mimics the enzyme and the student's hand represents the enzyme's active site. The catalytic event is the transfer of marbles (substrate molecules) by hand from one plastic container to another. As predicted, increases…

This paper proposes criteria that instructors should be sensitive to when evaluating simulations or role-plays for use in international/comparative politics courses. The potential benefits and drawbacks to these interactive exercises are addressed as well as the special circumstances that must be taken into consideration to reap the full promise…

This study addressed recruiting principals into low performing schools. A sample (N=619) of principals, assistant principals, central office administrators, school counselors, and teacher-leaders from the 29th largest school district in the United States role-played as applicants for principal vacancies at schools classified as low-performing…

In previous studies of educational systems, Markov chains have often been used in simulations in which history played no role because all events were described as independent of each other. Mono-level dynamics (i.e., the social context in which learning occurs is ignored) have also been applied to simulations. Educational theories, however, are…

Measures of the robustness of disease class-specific diagnostic concepts could play a central role in training programs designed to assure the development of diagnostic competence. In the pilot study, the authors used disease/sign-symptom conditional probability estimates, Monte Carlo procedures, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to create…