Process diagrams are important tools in biology for explaining processes such as protein synthesis, compound cycles and the like. The aim of the present study was to measure the ability to solve process-diagram problems in biology and its relationship with prior knowledge, spatial ability and working memory. For this purpose, we developed a test…

Interest on the part of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Board of Directors in the development of a set of descriptions of the core competencies for AACRAO professions goes back several years, with more active discussion beginning in 2011 under the leadership of AACRAO President Nora McLaughlin. At…

Showing early indicators of increased graduation rates and college readiness among students of color and low-income students, Linked Learning has the potential to be even more impactful when integrated with Common Core and other new California standards. This report examines promising strategies being employed at nine California school districts.…

Building upon the work of Zieffler, Garfield, DelMas and Reading (2008) and others, we developed a framework for assessing informal inferential tasks in middle school mathematics textbooks. The framework both embodies the key recommendations for developing informal inferential reasoning and captures common trimming attributes, which lower the…

Math Teachers' Circles (MTCs) are an innovative, problem-solving focused approach to professional development. This model provides teachers opportunities to develop their problem solving skills as well as help them to communicate with others on classroom implementation of problem-solving activities. As with any professional development with…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an educational agent, used in online task based learning media, and its form characteristics on problem solving ability perceptions of students. 2x2 factorial design is used in this study. The first study factor is the role of the educational agent and the second factor is form characteristics…

The well-studied Baker et al., affect detectors on boredom, frustration, confusion and engagement concentration with ASSISTments dataset were used to predict state tests scores, college enrollment, and even whether a student majored in a STEM field. In this paper, we present three attempts to improve upon current affect detectors. The first…

In this dissertation, the following "network computing problem" is considered. Source nodes in a directed acyclic network generate independent messages and a single receiver node computes a target function f of the messages. The objective is to maximize the average number of times f can be computed per network usage, i.e., the "computing…

Quite a number of interesting problems in probability feature an event with probability equal to 1/e. This article discusses three such problems and attempts to explain why this probability occurs with such frequency.

The method of "Double False Position" is an arithmetic approach to solving linear equations that pre-dates current algebraic methods by more than 3,000 years. The method applies to problems that, in algebraic notation, would be expressed as y = L(x), where L(x) is a linear function of x. Double False Position works by evaluating the described…

Diophantine equations constitute a rich mathematical field. This article may be useful as a basis for a student math club project. There are several situations in which one needs to find a solution of indeterminate polynomial equations that allow the variables to be integers only. These indeterminate equations are fewer than the involved unknown…

In the United States, people's collective definitions, perceptions, and myths about creativity have, at best, produced an uneven understanding of what it means to be a creative person. This article aims to clarify meanings associated with the broad term "creativity" and identify some observable processes associated with it. Part of the problem in…

A physics teacher assigns problems to his or her students not to keep them indoors during sunny days, but to strengthen and deepen their understanding of the universe. Every problem has not only an answer, but also a "moral to the story"--a reason why that question and that answer are interesting and probing. It is an unfortunate fact that our…

The problem of a ladder leaning on a wall has been a staple of introductory physics for years. It is discussed in numerous physics textbooks and in journals. Now, it even has an Internet presence. Postings from students seek help for "ladder on a wall" problems. A quick review of those postings would show that they all deal with frictionless…

It has been suggested that verbally sophisticated individuals engage in a series of precurrent behaviors (e.g., covert intraverbal behavior, grouping stimuli, visual imagining) to solve problems such as answering questions (Palmer, 1991; Skinner, 1953). We examined the effects of one problem solving strategy--visual imagining--on increasing…