Background: Engaging students in computer-assisted guided inquiry learning has great potential to scaffold their scientific understanding: Students are expected to improve their scientific problem-solving skills, and at the same time gain a deep conceptual understanding of the subject-matter. Additional generative activities such as creating video…

This paper argues that science education has overemphasized the importance of construction at the expense of critique. In doing so, it draws on two key premises--Ford's argument that the construction of knowledge requires a dialectic between construction and critique and Mercier and Sperber's theory of argumentative reasoning that critique is…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of visual cues and different types of self-explanation prompts on learning, cognitive load, and intrinsic motivation in an interactive multimedia environment that was designed to deliver a computer-based lesson about the human cardiovascular system. A total of 126 college students were…

Michael Graves points out that it is only in the last 40 years that a rich base of theory and research about teaching and learning vocabulary has come into being. Grounding his article in this research, he lists some of the factors testifying to the importance of vocabulary and discusses what may be the most crucial fact about the task of teaching…

To help students learn how to interpret, infer, and speculate on conclusions, here is a week-long learning activity on "clue finding". A mitten, a bagful of debris and a few intriguing exercises with descriptive paragraphs show students that they use clues every day to draw conclusions and that they can extend this ability to analyze what they…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…