This article reports the potential of online role-playing games to be a powerful tool for English as a second language (ESL) learning. When Professor Edd Schneider and game designer Kai Zheng suggested to attendees gathered in San Francisco last spring for the annual Game Developers Conference that massively multiplayer online role-playing games,…

Purpose: This purpose of this paper is to describe a collaborative project from the University of Waikato, Hamilton New Zealand, in which the authors used process drama to engage final year teaching students with complex issues of cultural diversity, enabling them to "grow into" different kinds of leadership positions in an imagined…

This paper reports on a study of disagreement strategies used by Japanese learners of English (JLEs) studying at language schools in New Zealand. The study stemmed from an observation that JLEs were unwilling to express disagreements in exchanges with high-power (+P) interlocutors, possibly due to the threat of face-loss and the consequences of…

"Adult Language Learners: Context and Innovation" presents instructional practices that are particularly successful with adults. Adult language learners are goal oriented and direct their learning to fulfill particular needs or demands: to advance their studies, to progress up the career ladder, to follow business opportunities, to pass…

The National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996) recognize the efficacy of teaching science within the context of history, emphasizing the evolution of concepts, models, and theories. By studying science in a historical context, students view themselves less as spectators and more as participants in this human quest for truth and understanding.…

The decentralization of natural resource management provides an opportunity for communities to increase their participation in related decision making. Research should propose adapted methodologies enabling the numerous stakeholders of these complex socioecological settings to define their problems and identify agreed-on solutions. This article…

Role-playing games in natural resource management are currently being tested as research, training, and intervention tools all over the world. Various studies point out their potential to deal with complex issues and to contribute to training processes. The objective of this contribution is to analyze the limits and potentialities of this tool for…

This document describes a classroom learning activity that brings together role playing, learning about the Middle Ages, and working for rewards. In the course of the activity, entitled "Knights of the Round Table," students advance by completing assignments and amassing points. Players move upwards through the beginning or…

Students should become acquainted with gender communication differences in basic communication courses so that they can more effectively deal with each other. Very few business communication textbooks acknowledge that gender sensitivity is an important criterion. Also, instructors unintentionally ignore or trivialize the issue of gender…

Recent developments in multi-faceted Rasch measurement (Linacre, 1989) have made possible new kinds of investigations of aspects of performance assessments. Bias analysis, interactions between elements of any facet, can also be analyzed, which permits investigation of the way a particular aspect of the test situation may elicit a consistently…

Getting students to react to literature and write more than a good "topic" sentence is a perennial dilemma for teachers. A course at the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, Vermont, that incorporated improvisation with the writing process used role playing to solve real life situations, physical and verbal warm-up exercises to…

School psychologists engaged in ecological assessment need to measure the degree to which children's behaviors fit the demands of the school environment. Although no standardized instruments serve that purpose, rating scales and simulation/role plays can be adapted to measure the person-environment (PE) fit. Although most behavior rating scales…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: The Fresno County Office of Education and the Fresno Unified School District hosted the Mock Trial Competition. The state competition is sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, with cosponsorship from the California State Bar Association and the California Young Lawyer's Association. This…

Economics teachers at the secondary and postsecondary level are provided with an overview and general recommendations for effective use of games and simulations. Material is divided into two sections. In section 1, a description of card games, board games, activities, and puzzles is followed by a discussion of the advantages of each of these types…

The article reports a lack of significant increase in career maturity in 11th grade students who took part in the simulation "Life Career" for one school day. (CD)