In this article, the authors demonstrate a laboratory analogue of medical diagnostic biasing (V. R. LeBlanc, G. R. Norman, & L. R. Brooks, 2001) in 2 experiments and explore the basis of this effect. Before categorizing novel exemplars, participants first evaluated the likelihood that the item was a member of the category suggested on that…

Throughout history human subject research has been plagued by researchers whose studies were riddled with danger and/or risk to their subjects. Indeed, one may cite numerous situations where human subjects were injured and/or killed in experiments that were designed with no thought or anticipation of risk to the subjects. As a result, the federal…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an indexing and teaching focus mining system for lecture videos recorded in an unconstrained environment. Design/methodology/approach: By applying the proposed algorithms in this paper, the slide structure can be reconstructed by extracting slide images from the video. Instead of applying…

Incorporating business skills such as problem-solving, public presentations, collaboration, and self-direction into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects is an excellent way to build students' enthusiasm for these disciplines. When educators add workplace internships to the learning experience, they are well on their way…

The use of visual aids is expected to have a positive effect on students' learning. However, not all visual aids work equally well. A recent meta-analytic research which examined 42 studies has found that the use of animated visuals does not facilitate learning (Anglin, Vaez & Cunnincham, 2004). The failure of visual aids can be attributed to…

"Social Navigation" for the Web has been created as a response to the problem of disorientation in information space. It helps by visualizing traces of behavior of other users and adding social affordance to the information space. Despite the popularity of social navigation ideas, very few studies of social navigation systems can be found in the…

Crystals are beautiful structures--yet they occur naturally in dirty and remote places. In the inquiry-based activity described here, students will enjoy the process of creating their own crystals and using microscopes to examine them. It demonstrates the process of mineral concentration and deposition. Upon completing this activity, students…

The International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT) is a worldwide, annual competition for secondary school students. This is our solution to problem number 10, "The Kaye effect", as presented in the final round of the 21st IYPT in Trogir, Croatia. The Kaye effect occurs when a thin stream of shampoo or a different adequate non-Newtonian liquid…

A problem-based approach to the teaching of mechanical wave propagation, focused on observation and measurement of wave properties in solids and on modelling of these properties, is presented. In particular, some experimental results, originally aimed at measuring the propagation speed of sound waves in metallic rods, are used in order to deepen…

We conducted two experiments designed to investigate the effects of ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) on oral reading fluency and the generalization to students' rate and level of reading comprehension. First, an alternating treatment design was used to compare two sixth-grade, general education students' rates and level of oral reading comprehension…

As physics teachers at the collegiate level, we are faced with the difficulty of lack of interest in science among non-science majors. An example of this occurred in a conceptual physics course at West Virginia University, where we taught mostly students attending the education college. A poll taken of the class found 62% of the students wrote…

The research reported here consists of the introduction of an intervention based on a series of laboratory activities combined with concept mapping. The purpose of this intervention was to enhance student understanding of acid-base chemistry for tenth grade students' from two classes in a Turkish high school. An additional aim was to enhance…

Guided-inquiry experiments offer the same opportunities to participate in the process of science as classical organic qualitative analysis used to do. This three-week guided-inquiry project involves an aldol-dehydration synthesis of a chalcone chosen from a set of nine, followed by a catalytic transfer hydrogenation reaction using ammonium formate…

Recent federal education policies and reports have generated considerable debate about the meaning, methods, and goals of "scientific research" in mathematics education. Concentrating on the critical problem of determining which educational programs and practices reliably improve students' mathematics achievement, these policies and reports focus…

In the exciting, "out of this world" activity described here, students measure the Earth using meter sticks while measuring their shadows in two distant locations. To obtain the size of the Earth, students discover the connection between the measurements of the shadows and a model of the spherical Earth following the method developed by…