simSchool is a game-based, virtual, and interactive tool that allows pre-service teachers to acquire new skills while constructing knowledge through experimentation with learning situations. Pre-service teachers develop know-how--or heuristic knowledge--through repeated practice in the "Personality Plus Higher-Order Thinking" module to…

There is considerable demand for special education services for the over half a million students with autism in the United States. While assistive technology may augment educational services, its implementation is often prevented by a number of practical and attitudinal barriers. These barriers are especially pertinent for the newest and thus…

Computer-supported assessment tools can bring significant benefits to both students and teachers. When integrated in traditional education workflows, they may help to reduce the time required to perform the evaluation and consolidate the perception of fairness of the overall process. When integrated within on-line intelligent tutoring systems,…

This article examines two communities of youth who play an online game that integrates physical activity into virtual game play. Participating youth from two research sites--an urban middle school and a suburban junior high school--wore FitBits that tracked their physical activity and then integrated their real-world energy into game-world…

Augmented Reality (AR) is recognized as one of the most important developments in educational technology for both higher and K-12 education as emphasized in Horizon report (Johnson et al., 2016, 2015). Furthermore, AR is expected to achieve widespread adoption that will take two to three years in higher education and four to five years in K-12…

Online laboratories have traditionally been split between virtual labs, with simulated components; and remote labs, with real components. The former tend to provide less realism but to be easily scalable and less expensive to maintain, while the latter are fully real but tend to require a higher maintenance effort and be more error-prone. This…

This paper describes the redesign and implementation of an introductory Information Systems class. The redesign was guided by principles drawn from the experiential and active learning literature. Central to the redesign are two simulated companies: petGRO, a fictional ERP-enabled pet food and accessories e-tailer, and beans4all, a technology…

In 2014, Virginia's Montgomery County school division adopted a place-based social studies curriculum titled "My Place in Time and Space" for fifth grade students. The curriculum promotes an awareness of the impact of place on local knowledge and disciplinary understandings in southwest Virginia, while also connecting local history to…

Specifically Second Life (SL) among virtual worlds draws attention of researchers to form collaborative learning environments (Sutcliffe & Alrayes, 2012) since it could be used as a rich platform to simulate a real environment containing many collaborative learning characteristics and interaction tools within itself. Five Stage Model (FSM)…

Purpose: This study assessed the feasibility of virtual reality (VR) exposure as an assessment and treatment modality for youth with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Methods: Forty-one adolescents, 20 of which were identified as having SAD, were recruited from a community sample. Youth with and without SAD were exposed to two social virtual…

Stoddard, Banks, Nemacheck, and Wenska suggested that there is a tension between the goal of the iCivics games and the goals of democratic education. In this response, we suggest that iCivics can be utilized to help meet the goals of democratic education and to encourage our nation's youth to become active civic participants if used alongside…

Thermodynamic processes are complex phenomena that can be understood as a set of successive stages. When treating processes, classical thermodynamics (and most particularly, the Gibbsian formulation, predominantly used in chemistry) only pays attention to initial and final states. However, reintroducing the notion of process is absolutely…

Many geoscience educators have noted the difficulty that students experience in transferring their classroom knowledge to the field environment. The Geoscience Garden, on the University of Alberta North Campus, provides a simulated field environment in which Earth Science students can develop field observation skills, interpret features of Earth's…

This research assessed how emotive animated agents in a simulation-based training affect the performance outcomes and perceptions of the individuals interacting in real time with the training application. A total of 56 participants consented to complete the study. The material for this investigation included a nursing simulation in which…

Game designers and researchers agree that the main motivation for starting playing a game is challenge. It is only a small step to say that when the game becomes too difficult, players can become frustrated and quit. While extensive work shows that challenge is central in player enjoyment, its influence on player retention has received little…