Background: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), or experiments, are the gold standard for intervention evaluation. However, the main appeal of RCTs--the clean identification of causal effects--can be compromised by interference, when one subject's actions can influence another subject's behavior or outcomes. In this paper, we formalize and study…

Teacher prompting is a means to increase preschool children's physical activity. Twelve 4- and 5-year-olds at one preschool in the southwest U.S. participated in an ABA prompting intervention that utilized a bug-in-the-ear device to signal teachers to prompt sedentary children to increase physical activity level during unstructured recess.…

A field experiment was conducted to investigate whether personalized e-mail reminders can improve study consistency and learning outcomes in an introductory-level undergraduate course. By randomly assigning whether nearly 300 students would receive occasional e-mail messages encouraging out-of-class study, we find that these reminders increased…

An exploratory study of the efficacy of "The Word Within the Word" tested students' abilities to recognize, use, and recall vocabulary. Ten middle school teachers and their 493 students participated. Five teachers used "The Word Within the Word", and five used traditional vocabulary materials. Students completed an out-of-level…

This paper analyzes the use of collaborative concept maps in multimedia learning tasks. Specifically, the effect of a cognitive aid (providing students a list of main concepts to generate a concept map) on the performance of collaborative concept mapping and on the level of collaboration in this task is discussed. The study was carried out with 57…

In this paper we investigated the contribution of a dynamic testing procedure, including multiple graduated prompts protocols, in identifying differences in need for instruction of second grade children (N = 120) with arithmetic difficulties. The training was adaptive and prompts were provided according to one of six protocols, each focusing on a…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) call on science and social studies teachers to engage in literacy instruction that prepares students for the academic rigors of college. The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) designed a framework to address the challenge of literacy-content integration. At the heart of the intervention are fill-in-the-blank…

This study investigated how question prompts and feedback influenced knowledge acquisition and cognitive load when learning Newtonian mechanics within a web-based multimedia module. Participants were one hundred eighteen 9th grade students who were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, forming a 2 x 2 factorial design with the…

This study explored the impact of a parent education program and the contextual factors that influenced the experiences of families in the program. Seventeen parents completed a 9-week, face-to-face program and 15 parents completed a similar online program. This study was designed as a multiple case study and utilized multimethods for data…

Background and Objectives: The aim of this exploratory study is to test whether social stories presented by a social robot have a greater effect than ones presented on a computer display in increasing the independency in expressing social abilities of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Although much progress has been made in developing…

We examined growth trajectories of writing and the relation of children's socioeconomic status and language and/or speech impairment to the growth trajectories. First-grade children (N = 304) were assessed on their written composition in the fall, winter, and spring, and their vocabulary and literacy skills in the fall. Children's SES had a…

Problem Statement: Previous studies showed that children with special health care needs are at increased risk for future linguistic problems and deficits in narrative abilities. Despite this evidence of increased risk, there has been limited research on the impact of young children's health problems on specific aspects of linguistic development.…

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of 37 first-graders' solutions to addition problems were conducted to re-examine inconsistencies in children's progress from counting-all to counting-on. The authors applied the constructivist's participatory-anticipatory stage distinction as a tool for fine-grained assessment. Among solutions given by…

This article presents an experimental study demonstrating how 120 learners use help tools in a virtual learning set-up. More specifically, several types of tutoring are investigated to find out the extent of the use of help tools in each. The effects of two independent variables which may have an impact on the behaviour of learners are studied:…