A real-life analytical assignment is presented to students, who had to examine an air conditioning coolant solution for metal contamination using an atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS). This hands-on access to a real problem exposed the undergraduate students to the mechanism of AAS, and promoted participation in a simulated industrial activity.

Self-rated sense of direction is reliably related to people's accuracy when pointing in the direction of unseen landmarks from imagined or actual perspectives. It is proposed that the cognitive substrate of accurate pointing responses is a vector representation, which is defined as an integrated network of displacement vectors. Experiment 1…

The article describes a Windows program to estimate the expected value and sampling distribution function of the adverse impact ratio for general multistage selections. The results of the program can also be used to predict the risk that a future selection decision will result in an outcome that reflects the presence of adverse impact. The method…

Type I error rates for PARSCALE's fit statistic were examined. Data were generated to fit the partial credit or graded response model, with test lengths of 10 or 20 items. The ability distribution was simulated to be either normal or uniform. Type I error rates were inflated for the shorter test length and, for the graded-response model, also for…

In this study we investigated the effects of the average signed area (ASA) between the item characteristic curves of the reference and focal groups and three test purification procedures on the uniform differential item functioning (DIF) detection via the Mantel-Haenszel (M-H) method through Monte Carlo simulations. The results showed that ASA,…

This paper describes an interactive modelling, simulation, animation, and real-time control (MoSART) environment for a class of 'cart-pendulum' electromechanical systems that may be used to enhance learning within differential equations and linear algebra classes. The environment is useful for conveying fundamental mathematical/systems concepts…

This study examined 2 leader functions likely to be instrumental in synchronizing large systems of teams (i.e., multiteam systems [MTSs]). Leader strategizing and coordinating were manipulated through training, and effects on functional leadership, interteam coordination, and MTS performance were examined. Three hundred eighty-four undergraduate…

Unlike their monotone counterparts, nonparametric unfolding response models, which assume the item response function is unimodal, have seen little attention in the psychometric literature. This paper studies the nonparametric behavior of unfolding models by building on the work of Post (1992). The paper provides rigorous justification for a class…

Illness and injuries are common among students and school staff. Therefore, school nurses must be prepared. In this study, a 16-hour scenario-based emergency preparedness course for school nurses was evaluated for its effectiveness. Effectiveness was measured by (a) traditional methods (written exams and confidence surveys) and (b) skills and…

This article presents an interview with Clark Aldrich, whose expertise as an "e-learning guru" (one of three identified by "Fortune" magazine in November 2000) rests on substantial foundations: his service as the Gartner Group research director who initiated and developed the firm's e-learning coverage, his leadership of the world class team that…

The instructional scheduling arrangements of simulated and community-based instruction across an equivalent set of functional and vocational skills were examined. Five secondary age students with moderate intellectual disabilities participated in four instructional scheduling arrangements measuring skill acquisition, generalization, and…

This paper reports a set of Monte Carlo simulations designed to evaluate the main claims made by Laufer and Nation about the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP). Laufer and Nation claim that the LFP is a sensitive and reliable tool for assessing productive vocabulary in L2 speakers, and they suggest it might have a serious role to play in diagnostic…

Building and launching model rockets makes a great activity for a technology education class. A model rocket curriculum provides a valuable tool for improving students' technical skills that includes, but is not limited to, following technical instructions and procedures while learning about aerospace technology. This article describes a way that…

When the underlying responses are on an ordinal scale, gamma is one of the most frequently used indices to measure the strength of association between two ordered variables. However, except for a brief mention on the use of the traditional interval estimator based on Wald's statistic, discussion of interval estimation of the gamma is limited.…

The regression trunk approach (RTA) is an integration of regression trees and multiple linear regression analysis. In this paper RTA is used to discover treatment covariate interactions, in the regression of one continuous variable on a treatment variable with "multiple" covariates. The performance of RTA is compared to the classical…