The Pediatric Volitional Questionnaire (PVQ) was used along with the Test of Playfulness (TOP) to assess 16 children with cerebral palsy who took part in a study of virtual reality play intervention. Both observational measures are designed to assess children as they are engaged in occupations in one or more environments. Virtual reality offers an…

Teamwork is widely recognised as an important skill both generally and in the context of the computing industry. The majority of approaches to teaching teamwork are "practically" based and in higher education are often designed to run over a number of weeks. We required an approach that would work over a concentrated period of five days…

Students learn best when they interact with new information on a personal level. It is a challenge for teachers to tightly align student experiences with the standards assessed on high-stakes tests. To achieve this goal in social studies, the author has turned increasingly to simulations where students find such activities engaging, and their…

In this article, we will describe the results of a study of 6th grade students learning about the mathematics of change. The students in this study worked with software environments for the computer and the graphing calculator that included a simulation of a moving elevator, linked to a graph of its velocity vs. time. We will describe how the…

In this article, we describe a demonstration and discussion of an initial family therapy interview simulated by 4 student volunteers. Several concepts and principles fundamental to family therapy are illustrated: interview stages, one-person definition of a problem, systemic perspective, clear generation line, unified executive team, disengaged…

Cook School District is a Web-based simulation designed to allow teacher candidates an opportunity to explore connections between their actions as teachers and the learning and engagement of simulated students. The simulation provides a setting in which to practice the processes inherent in teacher work sample methodology (TWSM). The outcomes of…

Recent experiments have shown that placing dissimilar items on lists of phonologically similar items enhances accuracy of ordered recall of the dissimilar items [Farrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2003). Dissimilar items benefit from phonological similarity in serial recall. "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," 29,…

Microsimulation attempts to describe economic and social events by modelling the behaviour of individual agents. These models have proved useful in evaluating the impact of policy changes at the micro level. Spatial microsimulation models contain geographic information and allow for a regional or local approach to policy analysis. This paper…

Simulation and real data studies are used to investigate the value of modeling multiple-choice distractors on item response theory linking. Using the characteristic curve linking procedure for Bock's (1972) nominal response model presented by Kim and Hanson (2002), all-category linking (i.e., a linking based on all category characteristic curves…

Four pairs of connectionist simulations are presented in which quasi-regular mappings are computed using localist and distributed representations. In each simulation, a control parameter termed input gain was modulated over the only level of representation that mapped inputs to outputs. Input gain caused both localist and distributed models to…

This paper describes a student-centered, task-based alternative to published, mainstream curricula for intermediate university-level (second-year) foreign language courses: global simulation. The course format requires students to collaboratively complete a long-term task organized around a single premise or scenario. In the process, they learn…

In the contemporary higher education system there is growing interest in, and debate about, the need to strengthen and sustain the relationships between teaching and research. While there are multiple and varied explanations about these relationships, most acknowledge the importance of designing learning activities that explicitly develop the…

A resource room teacher describes a three-part mini-workshop in learning disability awareness for general and special education elementary grade students. An overview of the workshop is followed by description of preworkshop activities and preparation and implementation of each of the three sessions. Insets and tables provide a summary of the…

Describes a renewable resource allocation game designed to stimulate student interest in and understanding of market failure associated with open-access types of resource use. Employs the game to discuss advantages and disadvantages of property rights and regulation schemes. States the game benefits noneconomics majors in natural resource…

Games have long been used as a tool for teaching important subject matter, from concept building to problem solving. Through fun learning, students may further develop their curiosities and interest in their study. This article addresses the issue of learning biomolecular structures by virtual reality gaming. A bio edutainment solution featuring…