Corporate training professionals led the explosion of e-learning solutions in the 1990s. Yet in 2008, as new generations of technology-savvy, computer games-oriented employees are entering the workforce, corporate training departments are far behind universities in exploring the use of virtual worlds like Second Life or Protosphere as platforms…

This study associates the perceived effectiveness of alternative teaching methods with perceived instructional emphasis areas for each of two groups: faculty and students. It seeks to determine the congruency between faculty and student response. The results evidence a commonality between faculty and student perceptions as to the effectiveness of…

Mechatronic systems that couple mechanical and electrical systems with the help of computer control are forcing a paradigm shift in the design, manufacture, and implementation of mechanical devices. The inherently interdisciplinary nature of these systems generates exciting new opportunities for developing a hands-on, inventive, and…

While there has been extensive experimental research on haptics, less has been conducted on cross-modal interactions between visual and haptic perception and even less still on cross-modal applications in instructional settings. This study looks at a simulation on the principles of levers using both visual and haptic feedback: one group received…

We present an immersive virtual reality (VR) application for physics education. It utilizes a recent physics engine developed for the PC gaming market to simulate physical experiments correctly and accurately. Students are enabled to actively build their own experiments and study them. A variety of tools are provided to analyze forces, mass, paths…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 16th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2019), held during November 7-9, 2019, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and co-organised by University Degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy.…

Educational computer games provide an environment in which interactions among students, teachers, and texts differ non-trivially from those of the traditional classroom. In order to build and research computer games effectively, it is important to provide a theoretical background that adequately describes and explains learning and interactions in…

Nowhere in the current digital technology landscape is the process of "blurring the lines between media" more apparent than with the uses and applications of gaming practices and technologies. Here the overlaps between new media and media interfaces are becoming significant as games technologies and practices are becoming more pervasive as…

Three examples of genetics and evolution simulation concerning Mendelian inheritance, genetic mapping, and natural selection are used to illustrate the use of simulations in modeling scientific/natural processes. First described is the HERED series, which illustrates such phenomena as incomplete dominance, multiple alleles, lethal alleles,…

Nursing education programs are faced with the challenge of providing students with the necessary skills to function in a fast paced, high technological environment. To address this challenge, the current trend in nursing education is to integrate the use of high-fidelity simulation technology into the curricula although there has been limited…

Three elementary aged students with autism participated in an evaluation of computer based video instruction that targeted functional life skills. The effects of the software were analyzed in the context of a multiple probe design across and replicated across participants. This study represents a departure from more traditional video based…

Educators know that people learn best by doing. When students are doing something rather than reading or learning about it, they learn better. Immersive environments help students retain more information and speed up their learning. There's an enhancement in the way they learn. Immersive environments--which utilize technologies like simulations,…

Based on a categorization of simulation and gaming barriers developed in a previous study, this work seeks to explore in greater depth the composition and nature of these obstacles. It examines the interrelationships between the barriers and the impact of other contextual factors in the pedagogic environment. A series of in-depth interviews were…

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a study conducted to investigate how the attributes of 3-D technology such as avatars, 3-D space, and comic style bubble dialogue boxes affect participants' social, cognitive, and teaching presences in a blended problem-based learning environment. The community of inquiry model was adopted…