The sounds of birds form the outdoor playlist of our lives. Birds appeal to the public, in part because of the wide variety of interesting sounds they make. This popularity has led to a long history of amateur participation in ornithology, which has recently produced rapid increases in freely available online databases with hundreds of thousands…

Background: There are two major types of pictures that have been the focus of multimedia learning research, namely, seductive and interpretational pictures. Despite an increasing body of literature documenting the effects of either seductive or interpretational pictures added to text-based materials, there is a paucity of research explicitly…

Estimating astronomical scales requires multiple complex mental processes, such as spatial thinking and interpreting large numbers. As such, it is a nontrivial question how these estimates can be most efficiently assessed. There is reason to believe that results from previous studies probing astronomical scale estimates are possibly susceptible to…

People often have difficulty in understanding processes of biological change, and they typically reject drastic life cycle changes such as metamorphosis, except for animals with which they are familiar. Even after a lesson about metamorphosis, people often do not generalize to animals not seen during the lesson. This might be partially due to the…

People often have difficulty understanding processes of biological change, and they typically reject drastic life cycle changes such as metamorphosis, except for animals with which they are familiar. Even after a lesson about metamorphosis, people often do not generalize to animals not seen during the lesson. This might be partially due to the…

As a result of the worldwide dissemination of COVID-19, educational institutions across the globe, particularly those that serve students in the field of science, have been mandated to close their doors. Consequently, educators and students have increasingly relied on educational technology to obtain a diverse array of resources. This research…

Pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers includes knowledge of representational forms, such as visual displays. Past research has provided a general means to evaluate pictures, but is not fine-grained on features internal to pictures. Furthermore, many existing picture function typologies consider pictures as subservient to text, though…

Students often use incoherent strategies in their problem solving involving force and motion, as revealed, e.g. when they are asked to draw force diagrams for amusement rides involving circular motion, whether in horizontal or vertical planes. Depending on the questions asked, assignments involving circular motion can reveal different types of…

Students often have difficulty understanding abstract concepts in chemistry and a low spatial ability, especially in visualizing intermolecular interactions at the submicroscopic level. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the spatial ability of students by using a 3D virtual representation as they study the curriculum topic of molecular…

Primary school students generally lack motivation for learning physics, which they perceive as a difficult subject. In order to overcome this problem, it is necessary to apply appropriate teaching approach. The aim of this research was to assess the educational efficiency of mind maps in physics and students' involvement when this approach is…

Practical work in secondary-level chemistry laboratories involves a high cognitive load for students. In addition to reading and understanding instructions, students have to think about observations and the underlying chemical concepts, as well as deal with the noise and social interaction of a busy classroom. One form of extraneous cognitive load…

The goals of this study were (1) determine the prevalence of various features of representations in five general chemistry textbooks used in the United States, and (2) use cognitive load theory to draw implications of the various features of analyzed representations. We adapted the Graphical Analysis Protocol (GAP) (Slough et al., 2010) to look at…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of redundancy when learning from realistic science materials. Participants received instruction where redundancy was manipulated between text and diagrams with captions, text and diagrams, and text only. Participants reported levels of cognitive load, responded to questionnaire items and…

The use of educational games as a tool for providing learners with a playful and educational aspect is widespread. In this paper, we present an educational game that we developed to teach a chemistry lesson, namely drawing a Lewis diagram. Our game is a 3D environment known as LewiSpace and aims at balancing between playful and educational…

A personal thinking language consists of verbal and visual means to transform ideas to action in social and work settings. This verbal and visual interaction of images and language is influenced by one's personal history, cultural expectations and professional practices. The article first compares a personal thinking language to other languages…