Student ratings of teaching play a significant role in career outcomes for higher education instructors. Although instructor gender has been shown to play an important role in influencing student ratings, the extent and nature of that role remains contested. While difficult to separate gender from teaching practices in person, it is possible to…

Relatively few studies have empirically tested computer-based immersive virtual environments' efficacy in teaching or enhancing pro-social attitudes, such as intercultural sensitivity. This channel study experiment was conducted (N = 159) to compare what effects, if any, an immersive 3D virtual environment would have upon subjects' intercultural…

Online learning from video modeling examples, in which a human model demonstrates and explains how to perform a learning task, is an effective instructional method that is increasingly used nowadays. However, model characteristics such as gender tend to differ across videos, and the model-observer similarity hypothesis suggests that such…

When children experience habitual peer difficulties, adults often remind them that many people care about them. How do such reminders of support impact children's emotional responses to acute experiences of peer disapproval? Intuitively, support reminders would exert compensatory effects attenuating the emotional impact of acute disapproval.…

Incorporating scientific fundamentals via engineering through a design-based methodology has proven to be highly effective for STEM education. Engineering design can be instantiated for learning as they involve mental and physical stimulation and develop practical skills especially in solving problems. Lego bricks, as a set of toys based on design…

Affective feedback during a self-assessment test could help induce the learner to an optimal emotional state regarding the learning material. However, there is a lack of experimental evidence concerning the influence of affective feedback during a self-assessment test. This paper is a step towards this direction. The effect of achievement-based…

The United States currently lags behind globally in the areas of math and science. In order to compete and meet the skills necessary for the future workforce, it has become necessary to seek out instructional strategies that will increase student achievement in those academic areas. With the wide variety of diversity occurring in public schools…

A stratified random sample of volunteer participants (N = 75) aged 9 to 14 was drawn from 16 public school districts' gifted programs, including as many females (n = 28) and children from groups traditionally underrepresented in gifted programs (n = 18) as available. Participants were randomly divided into an experimental (n = 38) and a control…

It is well established that girls and boys perform differently in traditional examinations in most countries. This study looks at a sample of 754 school students in Kuwait (aged about 13) and explores how boys and girls differ in the performance in a range of tests related to learner characteristics. The fundamental question is how boys and girls…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of modality and gender on learning from a computer-based matrix graphic organizer. A 2 x 2 factorial experiment was created by crossing two presentation modes (visual text vs. spoken text) and gender. Dependent measures included transfer and comprehension tests. Results revealed a significant modality by…

Sand play commonly occupies children at preschools, child-development centers, and school and park playgrounds. The authors review the research on sand play and present a small study on outdoor sand play conducted at a university-based, child-development center using a method they call "facilitated-action research." This study had four…

The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of gender and gender pairing on students' learning performances and knowledge elaboration processes in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). A sample of ninety-six secondary school students, participated in a two-week experiment. Students were randomly paired and asked to solve…

Current cognitive multimedia design theories provide several guidelines on how to integrate verbal and pictorial information. However, the recommendations for the design of auditory texts (narrations) are still fragmentary, especially with regard to the characteristics of the voices used. In the current paper, a fundamental question is addressed,…

Health and education are two important issues in developing economies. Field and natural experiments provided me with great opportunities for identifying the effects of health insurance and incentive on doctors' prescribing behaviors and the peer influences among students. The first chapter examines whether doctors write more expensive…