Serious games are becoming important educational tools and are increasingly being integrated into courses in many different academic areas and widely portrayed as a means of helping individuals concentrate on the subject matter and enjoy learning. This paper discusses the development and testing of a serious game by using a research model where…

Semantic word representation changes over different ages of childhood until it reaches its adult form. One method to formally model this change is the word maturity paradigm. This method uses a text sample for each age, including adult age, and transforms the samples into a semantic space by means of Latent Semantic Analysis. The representation of…

This study assessed the relationships of student attributes, course characteristics and course outcomes to college students' ratings of course quality in three types of settings. The analysis utilised data from online surveys of samples of college students conducted in 2011 and 2012 at the Pennsylvania State University. Included in the analysis…

The paper presents the results of a case study examining students' difficulties in the learning of integral calculus. It sought to address the misconceptions and errors that were encountered in the students' work solution. In quantitative study, the marks obtained by 147 students of Diploma in Computer Science in advanced calculus examinations…

Online professors typically assign teams based on time zones, performance, or alphabet, but are these the best ways to position student virtual teams for success? Personality and task complexity could provide additional direction. Personality and task complexity were used as independent variables related to the depended variable of team…

This paper introduces StairStepper, a new addition to Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART), an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that provides adaptive self-explanation training and practice. Whereas iSTART focuses on improving comprehension at levels geared toward answering challenging questions associated with…

In this paper, we report on developments in the Mastery Learning (ML) curriculum and assessment model that has been successfully implemented in a metropolitan university for teaching first-year mathematics. Initial responses to ML were positive; however, we ask whether the nature of the ML tests encourages a focus on shallow learning of…

The aim of this research was to explore students' ideas about chemical reactions and difficulties in understanding the law of conservation of mass in such reactions by using an approach that started from presentations of scientists' work associated with the law. The developed test items relied on: 1) the historical contents that illustrate the…

Although a growing number of second language acquisition (SLA) studies take linguistic complexity as a dependent variable, the term is still poorly defined and often used with different meanings, thus posing serious problems for research synthesis and knowledge accumulation. This article proposes a simple, coherent view of the construct, which is…

Public school choice has become a common feature in American school districts. Any potential benefits that could be derived from these policies depend heavily on the ability of parents and students to make informed and educated decisions about their school options. We examined the readability and complexity of school-choice guides across a sample…

Instructional design theories such as the "cognitive load theory" (CLT) or the "cognitive theory of multimedia learning" (CTML) explain learning difficulties in (computer-based) learning usually as a result of design deficiencies that hinder effective schema construction. However, learners often struggle even in well-designed…

Dual-process theories posit two distinct types of cognitive processing: Type 1, which does not use working memory making it fast and automatic, and Type 2, which does use working memory making it slow and effortful. Mathematics often relies on the inhibition of pervasive Type 1 processing to apply new skills or knowledge that require Type 2…

In educational testing, differential item functioning (DIF) statistics must be accurately estimated to ensure the appropriate items are flagged for inspection or removal. This study showed how using the Rasch model to estimate DIF may introduce considerable bias in the results when there are large group differences in ability (impact) and the data…

Using an ethnographic approach, the aim of this study was to explore how social workers learn and make sense of experiences in their daily practices. Five events that took place during an ordinary day of child investigation work are described and serve as the basis for the analysis. The findings imply that investigation work is largely a social…

This study aims to investigate the effects of item exposure control methods on measurement precision and on test security under various item selection methods and item pool characteristics. In this study, the Randomesque (with item group sizes of 5 and 10), Sympson-Hetter, and Fade-Away methods were used as item exposure control methods. Moreover,…