Successful construction management depends primarily on the representatives of the involved construction project parties. In addition to effective application of construction management tools and concepts, human factors impact significantly on the processes of any construction management endeavour. How can human factors in construction management…

Training in process control environments requires operators to be prepared for temporal and adaptive transfer of skill. Three training methods were compared with regard to their effectiveness in supporting transfer: Drill & Practice (D&P), Error Training (ET), and procedure-based and error heuristics training (PHT). Communication…

The propagation in time of a wavepacket is a conceptually rich problem suitable to be studied in any introductory quantum mechanics course. This subject is covered analytically in most of the standard textbooks. Computer simulations have become a widespread pedagogical tool, easily implemented in computer labs and in classroom demonstrations.…

Education in virtual worlds has the potential, it seems, for engaging students in innovative ways and for enabling new discourses on a host of issues. Virtual locations like "Second Life," "Kaneva," or "World of Warcraft," among other multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), also come with unique challenges for educators as they consider the…

Monte Carlo simulations are a classical tool to analyse physical systems. When unlikely events are to be simulated, the importance sampling technique is often used instead of Monte Carlo. Importance sampling has some drawbacks when the problem dimensionality is high or when the optimal importance sampling density is complex to obtain. In this…

Ac-powered contactors are extensively used in industry in applications such as automatic electrical devices, motor starters, and heaters. In this work, a practical session that allows students to model and simulate the dynamic behavior of ac-powered electromechanical contactors is presented. Simulation is carried out using a rigorous parametric…

The present study investigates the influence of depth on pseudoneglect in healthy young participants (n = 18) within three-dimensional virtual space, by presenting a variation of the greyscales task and a landmark task, which were specifically matched for stimulus-response compatibility, as well as perceptual factors within and across the tasks.…

Null distributions of permutation tests for two-sample, paired, and block designs are simulated using the R statistical programming language. For each design and type of data, permutation tests are compared with standard normal-theory and nonparametric tests. These examples (often using real data) provide for classroom discussion use of metrics…

The use of simulations in general and of system dynamics simulation based interactive learning environments (SDILEs) in particular is well recognized as an effective way of improving users' decision making and learning in complex, dynamic tasks. However, the effectiveness of SDILEs in classrooms has rarely been evaluated. This article describes…

Theories and methods from the prospective memory literature were used to anticipate how individuals would maintain and retrieve intentions in a continuous monitoring dynamic display task. Participants accepted aircraft into sectors and detected aircraft conflicts during an air traffic control simulation. They were sometimes required to substitute…

Multidimensional item response models are usually implemented to model the relationship between item responses and two or more traits of interest. We show how multidimensional multinomial logit item response models can also be used to account for individual differences in response style. This is done by specifying a factor-analytic model for…

PhET Interactive Simulations (sims) are now being widely used in teaching physics and chemistry. Sims can be used in many different educational settings, including lecture, individual or small group inquiry activities, homework, and lab. Here we will highlight a few ways to use them in teaching, based on our research and experiences using them in…

The University of Colorado's Physics Education Technology (PhET) website offers free, high-quality simulations of many physics experiments that can be used in the classroom. The Circuit Construction Kit, for example, allows students to safely and constructively play with circuit components while learning the mathematics behind many circuit…

Simulation environments make it possible for science and engineering students to learn to interact with complex systems. Putting these capabilities to effective use for learning, and assessing learning, requires more than a simulation environment alone. It requires a conceptual framework for the knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking that are…

Human subjects practiced navigation in a virtual, computer-generated maze that contained 4 spatial dimensions rather than the usual 3. The subjects were able to learn the spatial geometry of the 4-dimensional maze as measured by their ability to perform path integration, a standard test of spatial ability. They were able to travel down a winding…