Designing manipulative ecological experiments is a complex and time-consuming process that is problematic to teach in traditional undergraduate classes. This study investigates the effectiveness of using a computer simulation--the Virtual Rocky Shore (VRS)--to facilitate rapid, student-centred learning of experimental design. We gave a series of…

Purpose: The potential benefit that a low-cost scripted language and literacy supplemental curriculum titled "Read It Again!" (RIA; L. M. Justice, A. S. McGinty, A. R. Beckman, & C. R. Kilday, 2006) may have on preschool-age children's skills was explored. RIA was developed to meet the needs of preschool educators who may not have access to…

Objective: Students will develop positive attitudes toward communication research by linking new values and principles with the familiar values and principles contained in children's literature. Course: Communication Research Methods.

Despite advances in the science of teaching reading, there still exists a small percentage of students who fail to make the expected progress in reading-related skills, notwithstanding attempts at intervention. Even if these struggling readers learn to decode adequately, fluency remains a problem for many, and little is known about the…

Reader response theory and research on book interest underpinned a study of the appeal of celebrity-authored children's storybooks to elementary school students. We engaged fifth-grade students in selecting and reading from a set of 41 celebrity-authored books and completing reader response forms. Utilizing the survey research design and a…

Single subject research methodology is commonly used and cited in special education courses and journals. This article reviews the types of single subject research designs published in eight refereed journals between 1983 and 2007 used to answer applied research questions. Single subject designs were categorized as withdrawal/reversal, time…

This article explores how concept maps and mind maps can be used as data collection tools in mixed methods research to combine the clarity of quantitative counts with the nuance of qualitative reflections. Based on more traditional mixed methods approaches, this article details how the use of pre/post concept maps can be used to design qualitative…

The purpose of this study is to investigate student attitudes towards and perceptions of using the Internet and information technology to mediate a design studio course and to propose guidelines and suggestions for developing Internet-mediated design studio courses. Two classes of third-year undergraduate industrial design students in two…

Recently, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) has focused its attention on mandating specific ethics coursework within the 150-hr requirement for eligibility to sit for the uniform CPA examination. This push for ethics education heightened attention toward ethics in the accounting curriculum and is the basis for the…

This article describes and discusses issues related to research design and data analysis in the mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods. It is increasingly desirable to use multiple methods in research, but questions arise as to how best to design and analyze the data generated by mixed methods projects. I offer a conceptualization for such…

The trend towards demand-driven agricultural research has focused attention on the inclusion of farmers in research planning. Theoretically, this should enhance ownership and increase the applicability of research. However, in practice, several tensions emerge with regard to the operationalization of such "user-driven research planning…

L. Wilkinson and the Task Force on Statistical Inference (1999) recommended reporting confidence intervals for measures of effect sizes. If the sample size is too small, the confidence interval may be too wide to provide meaningful information. Recently, K. Kelley and J. R. Rausch (2006) used an iterative approach to computer-generate tables of…

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of training behavioral skills to staff members working with consumers with developmental disabilities. A training program that does not rely solely on consultants or administrators may benefit human services agencies that have limited resources to allocate to training. In the present study, the…

Multimodal feedback could promote college students' conceptual, procedural and heuristic knowledge learning. This study used an experimental design to investigate the interaction effects of instructor's narrated feedback (with procedural feedback delivered visually and heuristic feedback auditorily) and gender on their post-test performance of a…

This study contributes to L2 writing research which seeks to tie predictions of the Limited Attentional Capacity Model (Skehan, 1998; Skehan & Foster, 2001) and Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001, 2005, 2011a, 2011b) to models of working memory in L1 writing (Kellogg, 1996). The study uses a quasi-experimental research design to investigate…