Describes the application of simulation as a teaching tool which provides a means of understanding living organisms by representing only the essential aspects of selected biological processes which might not be readily visualized. (BR)

A simulation, entitled Truth in Advertising, is presented to provide upper elementary students with a frame of reference with which to assess the advertising they encounter and to make them aware of the rules of fair practices in the market place. (JR)

Using a university-owned computer, English secondary schools participate in a game to stabilise the course of their "nation's" economy over a 20 year period. Information provided to participating students is included in the article. (JH)

An ethnographic study explored the hypothesis that the use of "familiar" people in mock trial simulations contributes to student inattention to interpersonal skill demands necessary for proficient trial lawyering. Participants in the study included 12 third-year law school students, 1 adjunct instructor, 1 researcher, 12 local high…

A study investigated the effects of order verdict consideration and decision rule on jury verdicts. After reading the summary of an actual trial, 240 mock jurors drawn from undergraduate communications classes were randomly assigned to six-member juries. Jury assignments were made under two verdict orders (ascending and descending order of…

A review of the literature on simulation as an alternative to field experience programs in teacher education is presented. A review is also offered of articles on the effectiveness of simulation techniques. Future directions for simulation are discussed, including "video robotics" and computer programs. This investigation was limited to journal…

The effectiveness of 19 methods of smoothing was investigated as those methods apply to the equipercentile method of test equating. Seven methods involved smoothing the score distribution before the tests were equated (presmoothing). Seven involved smoothing the resultant points after the equating (postsmoothing). Five methods involved combining…

This chapter presents two significant gaming concepts, one old and one new, and demonstrates how interactive teaching/learning situations can be structured through their application to attain prespecified objectives which require communication, group decision making, planning, or simple interactive skills. Frame games, the older concept, are…

Three hundred twenty-five entries describing curricula, simulation explorations, reference sources, audiovisual materials, and professional materials for educators are briefly annotated. While written specifically to aid teachers of occupational exploration in identifying instructional materials for their programs, this bibliography is intended to…

The construction of parallel tests from item response theory (IRT) based item banks is discussed. Tests are considered parallel whenever their information functions are identical. After the methods for constructing parallel tests are considered, the computational complexity of 0-1 linear programming and the heuristic procedure applied are…

Fisher's information measure for the item difficulty parameter in the Rasch model and its marginal and conditional formulations are investigated. It is shown that expected item information in the unconditional model equals information in the marginal model, provided the assumption of sampling examinees from an ability distribution is made. For the…

When latent class parameters are estimated, maximum likelihood and Pearson chi-square statistics can be derived for assessing the fit of the model to the data. This study used simulated data to compare these two statistics, and is based on mixtures of latent binomial distributions, using data generated from five dichotomous manifest variables.…

An overview of participative exercises of the game/simulation/case study type is provided, and seven distinct types of exercises are identified and briefly described; i.e., "pure" games; "pure" simulations; "pure" case studies; simulation games; games used as case studies; simulated case studies; and simulation games used as case studies. The…

The booklet describes the approach to career education for hearing impaired students developed by the Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) in the District of Columbia. The KDES model is described in terms of project direction and the seven model components: planning, staff development, program development, curriculum development,…

Two games are presented which demonstrate the complexity of the hazardous waste problem through an introduction to the: (1) economics of waste disposal; (2) legislation surrounding waste disposal; (3) necessity to handle wastes with care; (4) damages to the environmental and human health resulting from improper disposal; (5) correct ways to…