Based on our work teaching undergraduate Calculus courses, we offer insight into teaching the chain rule to reduce cognitive load for students. A particularly difficult topic for students to grasp, problems likely arise due to student struggles with the concept of function and, particularly, function composition relative to when they first…

This study investigates the effects of Processing Instruction (PI) on the acquisition of grammatical gender and gender-marked pronouns in German. PI was compared to Traditional Instruction, i.e. a traditional, vocabulary-oriented approach using color cues (TI) and a Categorization and Memorization task (CM). The results of an immediate posttest…

Recognition of interference and diffraction patterns is a difficult task for both high-school and university students. Many students fail to observe important features of particular patterns and identify the differences among similar patterns. In this study, we investigated if performing students' investigative experiments can help high-school…

The introduction of the computer into the educational process is a fact. The educational use of new technologies creates a new, more appealing and enjoyable learning environment. The introduction of new technologies into school differentiates the role of the professor by giving him/her a guiding character in a process of experiential approach to…

Block building activities help develop students' spatial reasoning, but few studies focus on the development of block building skills beyond preschool. We worked with four kindergarten, four first grade, and four second grade students to learn more about their Lego block building. We compared students' accuracy, building strategies, and spatial…

Emotions can both facilitate and hinder learning. Emotional design features such as colors and shapes can be embedded in multimedia learning environments to manipulate learners' affects and learning outcomes. However, some studies suggest that emotional designs promote learning, while others show that they hinder it. Although Brom et al.…

Learning language is always a challenge. A more daunting task is learning those culturally bound aspects of language. The present study examines the ability of Jordanian EFL learners to comprehend culturally bound color expressions. It also investigates whether L1 transfer plays a role in their processing of color idioms. To achieve this goal, I…

Eight inquiry-based activities, described here in sufficient detail for faculty to adopt in their own courses, were designed to teach students fundamental concepts in heat transfer. The concept areas chosen were (1) factors affecting the rate vs. amount of heat transfer, (2) temperature vs. perceptions of hot and cold, (3) temperature vs. energy…

People usually talk about "hot and cold" colours without really thinking of the impact these definitions may have on scientific understanding. These colours are associated with the human sensations of hot and cold, and this idea is consistent with commonsense and daily experience. Interacting with students, we detect conceptual conflicts when they…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…