In 2005, the ACS Examinations Institute released an exam for first-term general chemistry in which items are intentionally paired with one conceptual and one traditional item. A second-term, paired-questions exam was released in 2007. This paper presents an empirical study of student performances on these two exams based on national samples of…

For over 50 years, "seven plus or minus two" has been a commonly used guideline for gauging how many chunks of new information should be presented at one time in learning and performance situations. Often cited as the limit of working memory, this guideline was created as a result of misinterpreting an article by Miller (1956). More recent studies…

Tables are a presentation format that is commonly used to organize information, and they are widely present in many scenarios of our students' everyday activities; however, there is a scarcity of studies devoted to their analysis. Some of these studies point out that the organization of data into a double-entry table presents difficulties for…

This study of fifteen first generation American college freshmen documents their initial semester with a focus on factors and dispositions contributing to eventual success or failure. Students were identified prior to campus arrival, allowing for immediate and real-time data collection as they were experiencing the beginning of their college…

Applied linguists have identified three components of second language (L2) performance: complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) to measure L2 development. Many studies researching CAF found trade-off effects (in which a higher performance in one component corresponds to lower performance in another) during tasks, often in online oral language…

In Learning Networks, learners need to share knowledge with others to build knowledge. In particular, when working on complex tasks, they often need to acquire extra cognitive resources from others to process a high task load. However, without support high task load and organizing knowledge sharing themselves might easily overload learners'…

Over recent years, UK medical schools have moved to more integrated summative examinations. This paper analyses data from the written assessment of undergraduate medical students to investigate two key psychometric aspects of this type of high-stakes assessment. Firstly, the strength of the relationship between examiner predictions of item…

This article compares the definition of "box plot" as used in the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" with other definitions used in the education community; describes the difficulties students experience when dealing with box plots; and discusses the elaboration that is necessary to enable teachers to develop the knowledge…

For several decades, the "three-parameter logistic model" (3PLM) has been the dominant choice for practitioners in the field of educational measurement for modeling examinees' response data from multiple-choice (MC) items. Past studies, however, have pointed out that the c-parameter of 3PLM should not be interpreted as a guessing…

Multiplayer online games form complex semiotic ecologies that include game-generated texts, player-to-player communication and collaboration, and associated websites that support in-game play. This article describes an exploratory study of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) "World of Warcraft" ("WoW"), with specific…

The common core state standards, which have now been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia, were designed around the goal of ensuring college and career readiness for all students. In this article, Rothman discusses research showing that a large proportion of U.S. high school graduates are ill-prepared to succeed in college or a…

This paper argues that pedagogic efficacy of multimedia packages (interactive multimedia presentations) cannot be achieved by experimental research in the absence of a detailed pedagogical screenwriting framework. Following a summary of relevant literature, such a framework is offered, consisting of micro-level design guidelines. The guidelines…

This study investigates the effects of extensive reading of e-books on tertiary level EFL students' English reading attitude, reading comprehension and vocabulary. Eighty-nine participants were assigned in two groups, with 46 students in the experimental group and the other 43 students in the control group. In addition to a traditional curriculum…

This paper deals with the nature and the level of difficulty of teaching and learning physics in the first year of undergraduate engineering schools in France. Our case study is based on a survey regarding a classic and basic question in applied physics, and which was conducted with a group of second-year students in a post-baccalaureate 1…

In this article the author shares examples of reading conferences with 10 English learners over the course of a semester. The reading conferences are conducted by four monolingual, European-American teachers at a primary school in the Southeastern United States. Sociocultural and identity theories are used as a theoretical frame for the research…