In Scotland, one "value added" (VA) indicator of secondary school effectiveness measures students' relative "progress" between Standard and Higher grade in particular subjects. When random nonschool factors affecting students' geography performance were computer-simulated to determine VA fluctuation over 25 years, the…

Explores the use of computer simulation/modeling programs for teaching a variety of science concepts. (Author/CCM)

Discusses the evaluation of interactive information retrieval (IIR) systems and explains two main approaches, system-driven and user-centered. Describes Text Retrieval Conference (TREC), and concludes that the simulated work task situation as an experimental sub-component could be recommended for future evaluation of IIR systems based on empirical…

Marketing students (n=99) used computer simulation, 34 did not. Students who performed well on traditional exams also did well on the simulation. Students who preferred working with others seemed to perform more poorly on both the exam and the simulation. (SK)

Interactive digital video enables computer visualization techniques that help students to collect, analyze, and model two-dimensional motion data. This article describes and evaluates five activities developed for the physics classroom with the use of this technology in mind. Activities explore concepts such as space, time, frames of reference,…

In a simulation study of ability and estimation of differential item functioning (DIF) in computerized adaptive tests, Rasch-based DIF statistics were highly correlated with generating DIF, but DIF statistics tended to be slightly smaller than in the three-parameter logistic model analyses. (SLD)

Describes a lesson that outlines a statistics/probability investigation into some aspects of past performance in snooker (a billiards game) using the random number generator on a graphing calculator. (MKR)

Used generalizability theory to assess the impact of using independent, randomly equivalent groups of experts to develop scoring algorithms for computer simulation tasks designed to measure physicians' patient management skills. Results with three groups of four medical school faculty members each suggest that the impact of the expert group may be…

Extends the modeling system presented in Part I. This model is applied to two widely diverse educational processes: "Student Actions" and "Do Homework Problem." Its computational syntax imposes completeness criteria on the modeling and its uniformity. (AIM)

Assesses desktop-computer models that rotate in virtual three-dimensional space. Compares spatial learning with a computer carpal-bone model horizontally rotating at 10-degree views with the same model rotating at 90-degree views. (Author/CCM)

Simulations on computers can allow many experiments to be conducted quickly to help students develop an understanding of statistical topics. We used a simulation of a challenging problem in statistics as the focus of an exploration of situations where members of a problem-solving group are physically separated then reconnected via combinations of…

Does designing a large academic library Web site for an imaginary person seem a sensible thing to do? As a reference librarian and member of the Web team of the Gerstein Science Information Centre (Gerstein Library), that is exactly what this author set out to do in May 2005. She proposed that the best way to ensure that the Web site meets the…

The Educational Object Economy (EOE) emerged from research on end-user authoring tools for multimedia software and, by 1997, developed into a library of over 2000 freely available interactive simulations for learning. The organization's original goals and its ongoing interest in alternative methods of software authoring led to continuing…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a Socratic animated agent on user performance in a computer-based CD player disassembly simulation. Vocational Education students were randomly assigned to one of two versions of the simulation. One version offered text-based feedback in the form of statements; the other one featured an…

Self-rated sense of direction is reliably related to people's accuracy when pointing in the direction of unseen landmarks from imagined or actual perspectives. It is proposed that the cognitive substrate of accurate pointing responses is a vector representation, which is defined as an integrated network of displacement vectors. Experiment 1…