The office simulation course can be a very effective teaching method in the small school where schedules, staffing, financing, and community resources do not allow cooperative business education courses. Suggestions are provided for such exercises as an annual report, inventories, proofreading, and customer input data. (CT)

Suggests how simulation games can be used in the classroom to help students understand situations such as politics, war, international relations, and social activities. Explains how to design a simulation game and presents teacher and student instructions for a game entitled "The Battle of Bunker Hill." (DB)

An active learning approach, which included role playing, simulations of handicapping conditions, problem-solving activities, and open-ended discussions generally exerted a more positive effect on the attitudes of 50 undergraduate students toward exceptional children in an introductory special education course than did a traditional lecture…

Analyzes instructional simulation games as systems of communication in which information is transmitted by game designers to players via channels such as scenarios, rules, and other players. Particular attention is given to the process whereby theoretical messages are encoded by game designers into game stories and then are decoded by players back…

Molecular models are described which are suitable for illustrating the nucleic acids. The same principles used to construct these could be applied to models of polypeptides. (BB)

Work is continuing at the University of Illinois at the Medical Center to simulate additional medically significant odors and to incorporate them into instructional and evaluation materials. Already studied are breath and urine odors used in the diagnosis of clinical conditions. (LBH)

Argues that a basic understanding of the experiential learning process (D. Kolb's Process-of-Learning Model) and the nature of cases and simulations as experiential activities will help instructors of business communication develop, evaluate, and use these tools more effectively. Discusses these activities within the context of business education.…

The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game demonstrates how cooperative or competitive choices influence decision making between two people or groups. A study of 48 college students tested an infinite-choice, continuous-time version of the PD. Results indicated that oscillatory cooperation was the predominant over-time behavior, that players matched…

Demonstrates how principles of simulation help students develop working models or prototypes. Explains how computer software enables this process for learners with only basic computer knowledge. (SK)

Presents a classroom activity on estimating animal populations. Uses shoe boxes and candies to emphasize the importance of mathematics in biology while introducing the methods of quantitative ecology. (JRH)

Presents an activity that demonstrates a crude method of mapping the sea floor and helps students appreciate some basic considerations that scientists face in working with a project of this type. Demonstrates the logistics of teamwork and the effects of time and cost limitations on science projects. (JRH)

Two possible standard error formulas for the polytomous differential item functioning index proposed by N. J. Dorans and A. P. Schmitt (1991) were derived. These standard errors, and associated hypothesis-testing procedures, were evaluated through simulated data. The standard error that performed better is based on N. Mantel's (1963)…

Debunks five misconceptions about improving creative thinking. To encourage students to think creatively, instructional techniques should reflect an integrated set of mental skills, use materials mimicking real-life situations, consider students' beliefs and tendencies toward creative thinking, show metacognitive sensibility, and foster a creative…

The consequences of underextracting factors and components within and between the methods of maximum likelihood factor analysis and principal components analysis were examined through computer simulation. The principal components score and the factor score estimate (T. W. Anderson and H. Rubin, 1956) tended to become different with…

Developed and investigated a goodness-of-fit statistic that considers the uncertainty with which ability is estimated and a resampling-based hypothesis testing procedure. Simulation study results indicate that the procedure should be useful for evaluating goodness-of-fit item response theory models for most testing applications when uncertainty in…