Since its inception in 2003, the popularity of "Second Life (SL)", an online 3-D virtual environment, has increased exponentially. The global reach of "SL" and the opportunities it provides for cross-cultural exchange using multiple modes of communication in real and virtual worlds make it an ideal venue to examine cross-cultural engagement.…

Defense contractors Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are joining forces in an innovative partnership to develop high-tech simulations to boost STEM--or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--education in the Baltimore County schools. The Baltimore County partnership includes the local operations of two major military…

Changes in DNA base-repair may serve as an indicator of the time elapsed since divergence from a common ancestor. DNA sequences can now be analyzed. The simulation presented in this article allows students to observe the accumulation of changes in a randomly mutating sequence of playing cards. The cards are analogous to DNA nucleotide or protein…

This article reviews current methods for evaluating models in the cognitive sciences, including theoretically based approaches, such as Bayes factors and minimum description length measures; simulation approaches, including model mimicry evaluations; and practical approaches, such as validation and generalization measures. This article argues…

Corrective feedback (CF) has been investigated in relation to learners' error types that trigger CF and learners' responses to CF. These research findings generally suggest that recasts, the most frequently used type of CF, did not trigger learners' reformulation of their erroneous utterances very frequently. In these studies, however, teachers'…

Two experimental studies test the effect of group mirrors upon quantitative and qualitative aspects of participation in collaborative problem solving. Mirroring tools consist of a graphical representation of the group's actions which is dynamically updated and displayed to the collaborators. In addition, metacognitive tools display a standard for…

U.S. state educational testing programs administer tests to track student progress and hold schools accountable for educational outcomes. Methods from item response theory, especially Rasch models, are usually used to equate different forms of a test. The most popular method for estimating Rasch models yields inconsistent estimates and relies on…

Evolutionary processes can be studied in nature and in the laboratory, but time and financial constraints result in few opportunities for undergraduate and high school students to explore the agents of genetic change in populations. One alternative to time consuming and expensive teaching laboratories is the use of computer simulations. We…

Griffiths, Christian, and Kalish (this issue) present an iterative-learning paradigm applying a Bayesian model to understand inductive biases in categorization. The authors argue that the paradigm is useful as an exploratory tool to understand inductive biases in situations where little is known about the task. It is argued that a theory developed…

The hierarchical latent regression model (HLRM) is a flexible framework for estimating group-level proficiency while taking into account the complex sample designs often found in large-scale educational surveys. A complex assessment design in which information is collected at different levels (such as student, school, and district), the model also…

In this article, the author describes a simulation of a coevolutionary "arms race" and introduce a way of teaching it that lets students use the theory of natural selection to explain the outcomes of the simulation. The simulation uses the numerical cards from an UNO[R] playing card deck to represent the speeds of individuals in populations of…

A commonly attempted approach to modifying attitudes regarding people with disabilities is to place people without disabilities in situations that are designed for them to experience what it is like to have a disability. This approach, called disability simulation, continues despite criticisms including a reported lack of effectiveness data and…

Judgments of associative memory (JAM) were indexed by ratings given to pairs of cue and response words. The normed probabilities, p(response|cue), were obtained from free association norms. The ratings were linearly related to the probabilities. The JAM functions were characterized by high intercepts (approximately 50 on a 100 point scale) and…

In this article, we describe a preliminary study that integrates research on engineering design activities for K-12 students with work on microworlds as learning tools. Here, we extend these bodies of research by exploring whether--and how--authentic recreations of engineering practices can help students develop conceptual understanding of…

Misspecification of the nature of organizations may be a major reason for difficulty in achieving performance improvement. Organizations are often viewed as machine-like, but complexity science suggests that organizations should be viewed as complex adaptive systems. I identify the characteristics of complex adaptive systems and give examples of…