Purpose: The purposes of this study were (a) to identify cognitive abilities and other factors related to successful completion of training for computer-based tasks that simulated real jobs and (b) to create a brief assessment battery useful in assessing older adults for these kinds of jobs. Design and Methods: Participants from three age groups…

Computer-based virtual patients (VPs) are an emerging medium for medical education that addresses barriers faced by geriatrics educators. Research has shown VPs to be as effective in changing knowledge and behavior as more traditional forms of teaching. This paper presents a descriptive study of the development of the University of Iowa's…

This study examines the relationship of gender and spatial perception on student interactivity with contour maps and non-immersive virtual reality. Eighteen eighth-grade students elected to participate in a six-week activity-based course called "3-D GeoMapping." The course included nine days of activities related to topographic mapping.…

An extensive body of research claims that labels facilitate categorisation, highlight the commonalities between objects and act as invitations to form categories for young infants before their first birthday. While this may indeed be a reasonable claim, we argue that it is not justified by the experiments described in the research. We report on a…

Several well-known and newly discovered counterintuitive regular and chaotic modes of the sinusoidally driven rigid planar pendulum are discussed and illustrated by computer simulations. The software supporting the investigation offers many interesting predefined examples that demonstrate various peculiarities of this famous physical model.…

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving presents a challenge to teachers in many U.S. schools. Some students are absent because they are traveling to be with their extended families for the holiday. Other students, assuming that nothing important will happen at school when so many of their peers are absent, may also be absent. One school's solution to…

This research began with the premise that video game play, especially as it relates to participation in persistent virtual worlds, provides fictional spaces where players engage in cognitive and communicative practices that can be personally transformative in prosocial ways. Players' experiences with these worlds are as much defined by the…

3-D virtual worlds, as a new form of learning environments in the 21st century, hold great potential in education. Learning in such environments, however, demands a broader spectrum of literacy skills. This article identifies a new set of media literacy skills required in 3-D virtual learning environments by reviewing exemplary 3-D virtual…

This research focuses on some of the affordances provided by SimCalc software, suggesting that its use can have important consequences for students' mathematical affect and motivation. We describe an episode in an inner-city SimCalc environment illustrating our approach to the study of affect in the mathematics classroom. We infer students'…

The National frameworks for science emphasize inquiry skills (NRC, 1996), however, in typical classroom practice, science learning often focuses on rote learning in part because science process skills are difficult to assess (Fadel, Honey, & Pasnick, 2007) and rote knowledge is prioritized on high-stakes tests. Short answer assessments of…

The best way to learn is by having a good teacher and the best language learning takes place when the learner is immersed in an environment where the language is natively spoken. 3D multi-user virtual worlds have been claimed to be useful for learning, and the field of exploiting them for education is becoming more and more active thanks to the…

Technology was integrated into service-learning activities to create an interactive teaching method for undergraduate students at a large research institution. Chemistry students at the University of Central Florida partnered with high school students at Crooms Academy of Information Technology in interactive service learning projects. The…

The need for professional programmers in embedded applications has become critical for industry growth. This need has increased the popularity of embedded software design courses, which are resource-intensive and space-limited in traditional real lab-based instruction. To overcome geographic and time barriers in enhancing practical skills that…

In this paper, a new dance training system based on the motion capture and virtual reality (VR) technologies is proposed. Our system is inspired by the traditional way to learn new movements-imitating the teacher's movements and listening to the teacher's feedback. A prototype of our proposed system is implemented, in which a student can imitate…

SystemC is a system-level design and simulation language based on C++. We've been using SystemC for computer organization and design projects for the past several years. Because SystemC is embedded in C++ it contains the powerful abstraction mechanisms of C++ not found in traditional hardware description languages, such as support for…