The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the digital material incorporated into Text-to- Speech system for students' English spelling. The digital material was made on the basis of the Spelling Bee vocabulary list (approximately 300 words) issued by the selected school. 21 third graders from a private bilingual school in Taiwan were…

A growing number of studies have been conducted on digital game-based learning (DGBL). However, there has been a lack of attention paid to individuals' self-efficacy and learning performance in the implementation of DGBL. This study therefore investigated how the badge mechanism in DGBL enhanced users' self-efficacy in the subject domain of…

A situated Chinese cultural festival learning system based on motion sensing is developed in this study. The primary design principle is to create a highly interactive learning environment, allowing learners to interact with Kinect through natural gestures in the designed learning situation to achieve efficient learning. The system has the…

Social media on the World Wide Web, such as Wiki, are increasingly applied to support collaborative learning for students to conduct a project together. However, recent studies indicated that students, learning in the collaborative project, may not actively contribute to the collaborative work and are involved only in a limited level of positive…

This study developed an empirically based questionnaire to monitor young learners' conceptions of nature of science (NOS). The questionnaire, entitled Students' Ideas about Nature of Science (SINOS), measured views on theory-ladenness, use of creativity and imagination, tentativeness of scientific knowledge, durability of scientific knowledge,…

In Taiwan, English was only officially taught at the secondary and tertiary levels before 2001. Since 2001, English courses have been formally incorporated into the curriculum in primary schools. Research on teaching and assessing English in primary school education is relatively new compared with research on other levels of education in Taiwan.…

Assessments, embedded with teachers' implicit (i.e. tacit) domain knowledge, play an important role in evaluating "comprehension of a subject". The knowledge on the importance of both the concepts and their relationships of a subject, if captured, made explicit, and shared around, may greatly help teachers construct more effective…

Background: A disparity in smoking behavior exists between the general and minority populations residing in Taiwan's mountainous areas. This study analyzed individual and environmental factors associated with children's smoking behavior in these areas of Taiwan. Methods: In this school-based study, data on smoking behavior and related factors for…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alternative conceptions about burning phenomena among Atayal indigene elementary school students in Taiwan. The main difference from other relevant research is that this study assesses Atayal people's worldview by means of a questionnaire developed specifically for this purpose. There were three…

Shorter sleep time was reported to be associated with psychological functioning in children. We intended to examine the relationship between nocturnal sleep duration and depression status by investigating if delayed bedtime could be one of the enhancement factors for depression in children. A cross-sectional study was performed to investigate the…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relations among Taiwanese elementary school children's effortful control, social relationships and their adjustment at school. Data were gathered on 407 third- to sixth-grade children (81 third graders, 79 fourth graders, 116 fifth graders, and 131 sixth graders) attending three low- to…

The goal of this study is to develop a virtual farm for educational applications. Users can play the role of a farmer by planting vegetables and raising poultry on the virtual farm to observe their growth through online learning activities. The virtual farm possesses educational and entertaining functions, and it is designed by simulating the real…

Two third-grade Taiwanese students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders participated in a pull-out, small-group social skills training program developed to promote their skill acquisition and maintenance. Using a multiple baseline across skills design, the authors demonstrated that both participants made marked performance improvement in…