Traces the evolution of the Curry Teaching Simulations and their impact on preservice and experienced teachers during the past 16 years. Highlights include versatility in software; navigation; pedagogical assumptions, including transfer of learning; and research on training skills and on teaching patterns. (Author/LRW)

Describes an activity to solve an applied problem using a random-number-based simulation. Provides objectives, prerequisites, directions, extensions, answers, a computer program, and worksheets for the activity. Six references are listed. (YP)

Provides a brief overview of the history, research, and theory related to play. Research from education, psychology, and anthropology suggests that play is a powerful mediator for lifelong learning, and the design of hybrid learning environments is suggested based on the constructivist concept of microworlds and supported with games and…

This article describes an activity that involves the use of simulation for decision-making. It is useful for demonstrating concepts in probability and statistics. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

For the full implementation of the quality of education, education reform is sweeping the earth of the motherland, realizing the reform from materials to the ways of teaching, from the contents to the form, from the form to the essence. However, how can the reform of basic education exist without the reform of normal education? We must face the…

Teachers know what a daunting job it can be to ensure that all students in a class learn effectively. In addition to the usual difficulties of gaining everyone's attention at once, instructors also run into the issue of preferred learning styles. In any classroom environment, the same topic is taught to multiple students, and each student may…

The prevalence of Internet applications nowadays has led many medical schools and centers to incorporate computerized Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methods into their training curricula. However, many of these PBL systems do not truly reflect the situations which practitioners may actually encounter in a real medical environment, and hence their…

This article presents an interpretation of autoshaping, and positive and negative automaintenance, based on a neural-network model. The model makes no distinction between operant and respondent learning mechanisms, and takes into account knowledge of hippocampal and dopaminergic systems. Four simulations were run, each one using an "A-B-A" design…

When he conducted the Stanford prison experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo wanted to know who would win--good people or an evil situation--when they were brought into direct confrontation. The situation won; humanity lost. Out the window went the moral upbringings of the young men involved in the experiment, as well as their middle-class civility. Power…

Two unresolved implementation issues with logistic regression (LR) for differential item functioning (DIF) detection include ability purification and effect size use. Purification is suggested to control inaccuracies in DIF detection as a result of DIF items in the ability estimate. Additionally, effect size use may be beneficial in controlling…

We present an iterative procedure that does not rely on calculus to model heat flow through a uniform bar of metal and thus avoids the use of the partial differential equation typically needed to describe heat diffusion. The procedure is based on first principles and can be done with students at the blackboard. It results in a plot that…

Many new teaching assistants have concerns about keeping authority in the classroom. These concerns make it more difficult for the teachers of the composition practicum to focus discussions on other important pedagogical issues. This study found that microsimulations were an effective way of allowing graduate students to respond to challenges to…

In this paper we present the "grounded adaptive agent" computational framework for studying the emergence of communication and language. This modeling framework is based on simulations of population of cognitive agents that evolve linguistic capabilities by interacting with their social and physical environment (internal and external symbol…

The spatial frequency hypothesis contends that performance differences between the hemispheres on various visuospatial tasks are attributable to lateralized processing of the spatial frequency content of visual stimuli. Hellige has proposed that such lateralization could arise during infant development from the earlier maturation of the right…

The present study investigated whether the balance of neighborhood distribution (i.e., the way orthographic neighbors are spread across letter positions) influences visual word recognition. Three word conditions were compared. Word neighbors were either concentrated on one letter position (e.g.,nasse/basse-lasse-tasse-masse) or were unequally…