The 1992 NIH Research Planning Conference on Prosthetic and Orthotic Research for the 21st Century (Childress, 1992) recognized that the field of prosthetics lacks theoretical understanding and empirical studies on learning to control an upper-extremity prosthesis. We have addressed this problem using a novel approach in which persons without…

This paper examines the effects of substituting a computer simulation for real laboratory equipment in the second semester of a large-scale introductory physics course. The direct current circuit laboratory was modified to compare the effects of using computer simulations with the effects of using real light bulbs, meters, and wires. Two groups of…

In this paper, a didactical proposal is presented to introduce the variational methods for solving boundary value problems to engineering students. Starting from a couple of simple models arising in linear elasticity and heat diffusion, the concept of weak solution for these models is motivated and the existence, uniqueness and continuous…

Virtual flight can be very entertaining, and computer-based simulators can also be educational, if organized and used correctly. When Berea College decided to find a flight simulator suited to the school's educational goals, the faculty settled on an ANT-18 Link trainer. This article begins with a discussion of Link trainers' history, and then…

If larger and larger samples are successively drawn from a population and a running average calculated after each sample has been drawn, the sequence of averages will converge to the mean, [mu], of the population. This remarkable fact, known as the law of large numbers, holds true if samples are drawn from a population of discrete or continuous…

Sportsmanship is a component that is increasingly missing in youth sports. Negative experiences resulting from poor sportsmanship may lead children to limit their participation in sports or drop out all together. Parks, recreation, and tourism professionals may look to systems modeling to help develop programs and policies in the hope of…

The rapid acceleration of online course offerings presents a design challenge for instructors who want to take materials developed for face-to-face settings and adapt them for asynchronous online usage. Broadcast lectures are relatively easy to transfer, but adapting content is harder when classes use small-group discussions, as in role-playing or…

Spatial skills are known to vary widely among normal individuals. This project was designed to address whether these individual differences are differentially related to large-scale environmental learning from route (ground-level) and survey (aerial) perspectives. Participants learned two virtual environments (route and survey) with limited…

A Bayesian approach is developed for analyzing nonlinear structural equation models with nonignorable missing data. The nonignorable missingness mechanism is specified by a logistic regression model. A hybrid algorithm that combines the Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is used to produce the joint Bayesian estimates of…

An attempt is made to translate the concept of perceived realism from the domain of general media studies to the domain of videogame studies. In order to make such a translation, a thorough knowledge and integration is required of the simulation aspects that distinguish videogames from older media such as film or television. The different meanings…

In the nineteenth century many people tried to seek a value for the most famous irrational number, [pi], by means of an experiment known as Buffon's needle, consisting of throwing randomly a needle onto a surface ruled with straight parallel lines. Here we propose to extend this experiment in order to evaluate other irrational numbers, such as…

This article explores some critical methodological and theoretical issues that emerge from recent research into word association behaviour in second language (L2) learners. The studies that we discuss here all use computer simulations as a tool to investigate L2 lexical networks, and to compare these networks with those of first language (L1)…

Over the course of instruction, instructors generally collect a great deal of information about each student. Integrating that information intelligently requires models for how a student's proficiency changes over time. Armed with such models, instructors can "filter" the data--more accurately estimate the student's current proficiency…

Workplace learning in a crisis-rich environment is often difficult if not impossible to integrate into programs so that students are able to experience and apply crisis management practices and principles. This study presents the results of a pilot project that examined the effective use of a virtual reality (VR) environment as a tool to teach…

This study investigated acquisition and transfer of the modeling ability of fifth graders in various domains. Teaching interventions concentrated on the topic of marine ecosystems either through a modeling-based approach or a worksheet-based approach. A quasi-experimental (pre-post comparison study) design was used. The control group (n = 17)…