The use of the physical environment as a three-dimensional (3-D) textbook is not a common practice in educational facilities design. Previous researches documented that little progress has been made to incorporate environmental education (EE) into architecture, especially among the conventional designers who are often constrained by the budget and…

Reasoning about ecosystems includes consideration of causality over temporal and spatial distances; yet learners typically focus on immediate time frames and local contexts. Teaching students to reason beyond these boundaries has met with some success based upon tests that cue students to the types of reasoning required. Virtual worlds offer an…

Pervasive worlds are computing environments where a virtual world converges with the physical world through context-aware technologies such as sensors. In pervasive worlds, technology is distributed among entities that may be distributed geographically. We explore the concept, possibilities, and challenges of distributed pervasive worlds in a case…

Attention to the core practices of teaching necessitates core pedagogies in teacher preparation. This article outlines the diffusion of one such pedagogy from medical to teacher education. The concept of clinical simulations is outlined through the lens of "signature pedagogies" and their uncertain, engaging, formative qualities.…

Test-retest studies for assessing stability and change are widely used in different domains and allow improved or additional individual estimates of interest to be obtained. However, if these estimates are to be validly interpreted the responses given at Time-2 must be free of retest effects, and the fulfilment of this assumption must be…

High-fidelity nursing simulation is an innovative technology that has changed the delivery of post-secondary nursing education. Overwhelming research supports the use of high-fidelity simulation in nursing to demonstrate enhanced critical thinking, caring behaviours, and collaboration. Furthermore, high-fidelity simulation provides the learner…

This paper explores the use of a three dimensional virtual world (3-DVW) to delivery assertiveness training to young adolescents. The case study aims to understand how a sense of presence in VWs facilitates and affect the performance of students role-playing activities to enhance their ability to resist sexual coercion. The results indicate that a…

Randomized experiments are commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. The goal of the present investigation is to develop small-sample corrections for multiple contrast hypothesis tests (i.e., F-tests) such as the omnibus test of meta-regression fit or a test for equality of three or more levels of a categorical…

This dissertation is comprised of three papers that propose and apply psychometric models to deal with complexities and challenges in large-scale assessments, focusing on modeling rater effects and complex learning progressions. In particular, three papers investigate extensions and applications of multilevel and multidimensional item response…

Currently science education is understood not only as education in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but also as an education in informatics. To analyze the current state of informatics education within the tertiary economy and managerial study fields was the aim of the research, the purpose of which was to support curricula innovation in the…

The core of instruction is the interaction between the student, the content, and the teacher. Good instructional design accounts for the students' needs and interests by personalizing the core to each student. Video games and simulations are one way to meet student needs and leverage their interests for increased student learning. In the 2011-12…

Maintaining spending power in real terms (current) while preserving an endowment's value in real terms (future) is the crux of intergenerational equity. Tobin's (1974) model provides the conceptual basis on which simulations were developed to study the impact of various inflation (0%, TIPS, CPI, HECA, and HEPI) and new giving scenarios ($0, $4…

Purpose: The authors aimed to design a distributed lambda model (DLM), which is well adapted to implement three-dimensional (3-D), finite-element descriptions of muscles. Method: A muscle element model was designed. Its stress-strain relationships included the active force-length characteristics of the ? model along the muscle fibers, together…

Purpose: Differences in vocal tract morphology have the potential to explain interspeaker variability in speech production. The potential acoustic impact of hard palate shape was examined in simulation, in addition to the interplay among morphology, articulation, and acoustics in real vowel production data. Method: High-front vowel production from…

A free program for the simulation of dynamic infrared (IR) spectra is presented. The program simulates the spectrum of two exchanging IR peaks based on simple input parameters. Larger systems can be simulated with minor modifications. The program is available as an executable program for PCs or can be run in MATLAB on any operating system. Source…