A paperless classroom, when all materials required to complete a class are available in an electronic form, has been shown to have positive impacts on student and teacher motivation, engagement, productivity, and efficiency. Recent trends suggest that of all of the technological tools available, tablet PCs can support many aspects of a paperless…

Self-assembly is the fundamental but counterintuitive principle that explains how ordered biomolecular complexes form spontaneously in the cell. This study investigated the impact of using two external representations of virus self-assembly, an interactive tangible three-dimensional model and a static two-dimensional image, on student learning…

Concept mapping, graphically depicting the structure of abstract concepts, is based on the observation that pictures and line drawings are often more easily comprehended than the words that represent an abstract concept. The efficacy of concept mapping for facilitating critical thinking was assessed in four sections of an introductory psychology…

This study examined the effects of a phonics supplemental small group instructional approach for improving kindergartners' word reading skills. Six kindergarten students from one primary school were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Each group participated in a phonics condition as well as a control condition. Data were examined using visual…

Social work educators are uniquely tasked with balancing content while helping students evaluate personal biases and develop ethical conduct necessary for social work professionalism. Social work education may benefit from technology like Student Response Systems (SRS) that allow educators to pose questions on sensitive topics in real time while…

Twenty-five percent of students in the United States are children of immigrant parents, who are considered English language learners (ELLs). As a collective ELL group, their performance level on every measure from achievement scores to graduation rates tends to be lower than almost any other category of students. With over five million ELL…

In this article, adult learner experiences of embedded literacy and numeracy within vocational programmes in New Zealand are explored and described to identify what these learners felt had contributed to their success as learners. The embedded approach is a distinctive feature of the adult literacy and numeracy education infrastructure in New…

Recent research on negation has demonstrated that while readers are aware that this text construction is difficult, they seem to be able to do little to improve their comprehension. The present research evaluated whether a change in typeface could improve comprehension and metacomprehension of negation. Results indicated that while readers were…

A mixed research design was used to examine how deaf students used the visual resources of a multimedia software package that was designed to support reading comprehension. The viewing behavior of 8 deaf students, ages 8-12 years, was recorded during their interaction with multimedia software that included narrative texts enriched with Greek Sign…

Can students be taught to better comprehend the diagrams in their textbooks? Can such teaching transfer to uninstructed diagrams in the same domain or even in a new domain? What methods work best for these goals? Building on previous research showing positive results compared to control groups in both laboratory studies and short-term…

Anatomical understanding is critical to medical education. With reduced teaching time and limited cadaver availability, it is important to investigate how best to utilize in vivo imaging to supplement anatomical understanding and better prepare medical graduates for the proliferation of point-of-care imaging in the future. To investigate whether…

Participatory mapping attempts to engage youth in the generation of personalized maps, as a way to both harness the value of individual knowledge about geographic space, and to concurrently empower the research participants by inviting them to take an active stake in the representation and explication of their spatial environment. Engagement in…

Our connections to the digital world are invoked by brands, but the intersection of branding and interaction design is still an under-investigated area. Particularly, current websites are designed not only to support essential user tasks, but also to communicate an institution's intended brand values and traits. What we do not yet know, however,…

The visualisation of knowledge structures through concept mapping can be employed to reveal critical links between theory and practice. This allows consideration of particular disciplinary knowledge structures and the active role of the student in manipulating these structures to gain understanding, in a manner that can encourage students to…

Authenticity is a key to using technology for instruction in ways that enhance learning and support learning transfer. Simply put, a representation is authentic when it shows learners clearly what a task, context, or experience will be like in real practice. More authentic representations help people learn and understand better. They support…