An artfully designed, 3-D computer-generated video story was created to demonstrate the mixing of primary colors to obtain secondary colors. Two research questions were explored in this research: Do artfully designed 3-D computer-generated video stories enhance learning or are such entertaining works a distraction from learning? And, do children…

Learning object design currently leads the instructional technologist towards more effective instructional design, development, and delivery of learning content. There is a considerable amount of literature discussing the potential use of learning object in e-learning. However, most of the works were mainly focused on the standard forms of…

This article outlines a conceptualization of personality as a cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS) and explores its implications for understanding disorders and pursuing therapeutic change. The CAPS conception of personality was proposed in 1995 in order to resolve a long-standing paradox in personality and social psychology, namely, the…

Background and Objectives: At McMaster University, the birthplace of problem-based learning (PBL), administrators and curriculum planners have begun the process of renewing the undergraduate MD curriculum. One step has been to conduct an environmental scan that includes input from medical residents. Methods: Individual interviews with 17 medical…

In 2002-03, a qualitative study examined the experiences of 70 stakeholders connected to two community-based adult literacy programs in Manitoba, Canada. Self-directed learning was one of several elements that these research participants considered essential to the learning process. These literacy stakeholders defined self-directed learning as a…

Critics of Invitational Education and other self-concept approaches to learning have long argued that there is a lack of empirical data to support the claims that approaches to student instruction based on self-concept theory are central to effective learning. Ellis (2001) examines a number of these analyses where self-concept, self-esteem, and…

In architecture courses, the bridging of design learning and construction is a constant challenge for educators. When designing the construction details of a building, students lack the field/site experience of the construction process and an understanding of the problems and solutions associated with erecting a building. The degree of…

This qualitative study investigated how students adapt to medical school. Thirty-six medical students completed an e-mail survey exploring the transition from pre-medical to medical education, the use of learning strategies, and self-regulated learning practices. Their responses highlighted the challenges of medical education and the learning…

Organizations value the business impact and benefits that accompany e-learning, such as workforce effectiveness, reduced training costs, and improved workforce retention (Taylor, 2001). However, although justifying the value of evaluation is clear, "e-learning evaluations often do not receive the priority that they deserve" (Tanquist, 2000, p. 1).…

In 5 experiments, a Hebb repetition effect, that is, improved immediate serial recall of an (unannounced) repeating list, was demonstrated in the immediate serial recall of visual materials, even when use of phonological short-term memory was blocked by concurrent articulation. The learning of a repeatedly presented letter list in one modality…

The authors explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia-dopamine (BG-DA) system and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in decision making. They show that a primitive neural network model of the BG-DA system slowly learns to make decisions on the basis of the relative probability of rewards but is not as sensitive to (a) recency or (b) the…

This review focuses on the development of writing research informed by a Vygotskian perspective. A methodological environment to aid the instruction of writing is presented. The review reveals the need to conduct research in developing students' inner voice, to lower the cognitive drain created during writing, and to understand how helpful the…

Adolescents often pursue learning opportunities both in and outside school once they become interested in a topic. In this paper, a learning ecology framework and an associated empirical research agenda are described. This framework highlights the need to better understand how learning outside school relates to learning within schools or other…

A socio-constructivist account of learning and emotions stresses the situatedness of every learning activity and points to the close interactions between cognitive, conative and affective factors in students' learning and problem solving. Emotions are perceived as being constituted by the dynamic interplay of cognitive, physiological, and…

In this paper, the authors evaluate map overlay, a concept central to geospatial thinking, to determine how it is naively and technically understood, as well as to identify when it is leaner innately. The evaluation is supported by results from studies at three grade levels to show the progression of incidentally learned geospatial knowledge as…