Many national science frameworks (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards) argue that developing mathematical modeling competencies is critical for students' deep understanding of science. However, science teachers may be unprepared to assess these competencies. We are addressing this need by developing virtual lab performance assessments that…

Nursing education is facing challenging demands today with the NextGen NCLEX scheduled for release in Spring 2023, updated American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials, and distance learning due to COVID-19. This dissertation examines the effects the COVID-19 pandemic had on nursing students as education was disrupted just prior…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced nursing education programs to change traditional face-to-face teaching to virtual education and simulated experiences. Therefore, research is needed to determine how this change affected nursing students' academic performance and their performance on standardized exams. The purpose of this three-part study, guided by…

Physical therapy students often have difficulty with the complexities of physical therapy practice. A lack of clinical reasoning skills is most likely the basis of the problem. Physical therapy education programs must foster clinical reasoning development through educational activities that prepare physical therapy students for competent clinical…

The purpose of this article is to examine the affordances of virtual reality systems in K-12 education. In this article, the writers will: (1) focus on the latest and future technological advances in virtual reality systems; (2) connect virtual reality advances to innovative and scaleable encounters in the K-12 space; (3) provide readers with a…

The economics curriculum today does not emphasize the study of population. This needs to change immediately because we are in the midst of another demographic sea change, slamming on the brakes right after a rapid acceleration during the last half of the twentieth century. Instead of glibly tossing a dependency ratio onto a slide, this article…

The paper deals with one of modern effective pedagogical technologies in relation to management of the educational process with students of higher educational institutions. The authors discuss the concept of virtual excursion, formulate its advantages over traditional technologies, clarify the principles of modern pedagogical activity through a…

Simulation studies are extremely common in the item response theory (IRT) research literature. This article presents a didactic discussion of "truth" and "error" in IRT-based simulation studies. We ultimately recommend that future research focus less on the simple recovery of parameters from a convenient generating IRT model,…

The purpose of this mixed methods multiple case study was to gain insight into the self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers participating in a curriculum enhanced via mixed reality simulation experiences. There were two cases within the present study, one was bound by pre-service teacher candidate participants enrolled as students within one…

This paper outlines a proposal to use smartphones and counterfactual reasoning to overcome rote and passive learning. Some historians and history teachers have highlighted the usefulness of counterfactual reasoning for a deeper understanding of the past. In a classroom history simulation, it is proposed here that counterfactuals can be developed…

Complex mathematical approaches exist in biological, social, and educational sciences, creating models to understand and explain cognition processes in human brain. Yet, the logged raw data is just an initial learners' behavior footprint in Virtual Learning Environments. Exploratory Data analysis would help to deepen the understanding of cognition…

The Hartung-Knapp method for random-effects meta-analysis, that was also independently proposed by Sidik and Jonkman, is becoming advocated for general use. This method has previously been justified by taking all estimated variances as known and using a different pivotal quantity to the more conventional one when making inferences about the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mixed reality simulations on preservice teachers' sense of self-efficacy. A quasi-experimental, one group with three levels, pretest-posttest 3 × 2 mixed design was used. Results showed a significant main effect for the between-subjects factor of total exposure (30, 60, or 90 minutes), as…

In this study, we gauge the perceptions of novice computer programmers about Second Life (SL) as a digital learning environment for concept understanding in computer programming. SL is chosen as the learning environment because it offers, within a constructivist frame, the use of learner-centered pedagogies for designing curriculum. We adopt a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role textbooks can play on writing complexity and lexical density as a proxy for critical thinking and ultimately learning, in relation to argumentative and summative writing when integrated with a virtual reality experience. In this study, differences in writing complexity and lexical density…