Exploring student test, homework, and other assessment scores is a challenge for most teachers, especially when attempting to identify cross-assessment weaknesses and produce final course grades. During the course, teachers need to identify subject weaknesses in order to help students who are struggling with a particular topic. This identification…

Most seventh grade students partially define themselves through everyday media messages. As a part of understanding how these images and the media impacts their lives, the author collaborated with her colleagues to develop a unit to help teens learn how visual messages such as those in pictures, media icons, logos, slogans, clothing, toys, and…

The 3D cube figures used by Shepard and Metzler [Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). "Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects." "Science," 171, 701-703] have been applied in a broad range of studies on mental rotation. This note provides a brief background on these figures, their general use in cognitive psychology and their role in…

The present study investigated the value of changing the format of overhead presentations from one dominated by headings and bulleted lists to one using a sentence assertion followed by visual evidence. A review of the literature of earlier studies on the subject of traditional overhead projections noted criticism of the traditional format. Recent…

Mother-child conversations about pictures systematically differ from mother-child conversations about objects: Pictures are more likely than objects to elicit talk about kinds, whereas objects are more likely than pictures to elicit talk about individuals. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether this difference between pictures and…

This article surveys research in the areas of aesthetics and design, usability, visual aesthetics in education, and recent statistics related to online education. The focus of the article is on defining the role of visual content and aesthetics in the user interface and exploring what importance aesthetics and visual content have to education.…

This study investigated the effects of captioning during video-based listening activities. Second- and fourth-year learners of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian watched three short videos with and without captioning in randomized order. Spanish learners had two additional groups: one watched the videos twice with no captioning, and another…

In the field of learning and instruction, feedback is considered an elementary component for supporting and regulating learning processes. Feedback plays a particularly important role in highly self-regulated model-centered learning environments because it facilitates the development of mental models, thus improving expertise and expert…

The use of visual aids is expected to have a positive effect on students' learning. However, not all visual aids work equally well. A recent meta-analytic research which examined 42 studies has found that the use of animated visuals does not facilitate learning (Anglin, Vaez & Cunnincham, 2004). The failure of visual aids can be attributed to…

Today, many school districts are turning to business intelligence tools to retrieve, organize, and share knowledge for faster analysis and more effective, guided decision making. Business intelligence (BI) tools are the technologies and applications that gather and report information to help an organization's leaders make better decisions. BI…

Some crucial issues in visual research involving children in schools are examined: the contradictions between the current widespread practice of visual recordings in public and private spheres and the cautious approach adopted in educational research; the dominance of adults and text in school research despite technology providing accessible ways…

Current methods of teaching basic amplifier design at the undergraduate level need further development to match today's technological advances. The general class approach to amplifier design is analytical and heavily based on mathematical manipulations. However, the students mathematical abilities are generally modest, creating a void in which…

This article examines two constructs--ritual and intellectual integrity--as they might unfold in early childhood settings. The authors use the popular practices of closed-ended crafts, calendar exercises, and worksheets to highlight the difference between learning experiences that have become formulaic habits and those that reflect rich and potent…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post-Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power…

Most historians interested in the cultural history of nineteenth-century America are familiar with the lyceum movement, first popularized by Massachusetts' Josiah Holbrook. While lyceums were extremely popular during the 1820s and 1830s, they disappeared with the advent of the Civil War--though later providing inspiration for Chautauquan lectures…