Graphic design's messages can reach across streets and across the globe; they can bring together countries, communities and strangers for a common cause; they can also serve to divide otherwise amenable neighbors. Design students must fully understand this potential reach and thus the responsibility they have to create tolerant, informed messages.…

Virtual worlds have been linked with e-learning applications to create virtual learning environments (VLEs) for the past decade. However, while they can support many educational activities that extend both traditional on-campus teaching and distance learning, they are used primarily for learning content generated and managed by instructors. With…

College students viewed a short multimedia PowerPoint presentation consisting of 16 narrated slides explaining lightning formation (Experiment 1) or 8 narrated slides explaining how a car's braking system works (Experiment 2). Each slide appeared for approximately 8-10 s and contained a diagram along with 1-2 sentences of narration spoken in a…

Problem Based Learning (PBL) has proven to be a highly successful pedagogical model in many educational fields, although it is comparatively uncommon in technical education. It goes beyond the typical teaching methodology by promoting student interaction. This paper presents a PBL trial applied to an undergraduate Digital Electronics course in the…

The purpose of this study is to incorporate adaptive ontology into ubiquitous learning grid to achieve seamless learning environment. Ubiquitous learning grid uses ubiquitous computing environment to infer and determine the most adaptive learning contents and procedures in anytime, any place and with any device. To achieve the goal, an…

Innovations in network and information technology have transformed traditional classroom lectures into new approaches that have given universities the opportunity to create a virtual laboratory. However, there is no systematic framework in existing approaches for the development of virtual laboratories. Further, developing a virtual laboratory…

In fall of 2004, Carnegie Mellon University embarked on a bold educational experiment, the establishment of an overseas branch campus at Education City in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Carnegie Mellon's decision to open up shop in the Middle East was by no means unique; indeed, Carnegie Mellon is just one of a growing number of institutions to…

This study examined the influence of critical reading orientation on use of external strategies such as note-taking and underlining while reading an expository text. In two experiments, undergraduate students were asked either to review an article on a linguistic policy (critical reading) or to summarise it (less-critical reading). Experiment 1…

This essay describes the results of an experimental class co-taught by an historian and a social studies educator. The class was designed to accomplish two things: to narrow the gap in disciplinary thinking between preservice teachers and historians, and to overcome the preservice teachers' compartmentalized thinking about the nature of their…

The goal of this research is to understand how generalized exchange systems emerge when information, as the object of exchange, produces a collective good. When individuals contribute information for a collective benefit, it can create a group-generalized exchange system that involves a social dilemma. I argue that two properties of information,…

Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of "unexpected" behavior, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The conscious violation of norms can be highly fruitful for sociology students, providing insights…

The authors describe a classroom experiment that motivates student understanding of behavior toward risk and its effect on money demand. In this experiment, students are endowed with an income stream that they can allocate between a risk-free fund and a risky fund. Changes in volatility are represented by mean-preserving changes in the variance of…

One hundred nine college students participated in an experiment that involved reading a passage and responding to a 20-item multiple choice test. The students were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The four conditions involved reading and copying, reading and highlighting, reading and taking notes, and reading and generating questions.…

In this article, we report on an experiment designed to improve the learning of metabolic biochemistry by nutrition and medical undergraduate students. Twelve students participated in a monitored lunch and had their blood extracted for analysis: (1) before lunch; (2) 30 min after lunch; and (3) 3 h after lunch. The subjects were divided in two…

We present a practical for university-level students aimed at measuring and comparing xylem hydraulic properties of co-existing plant species. After sampling branches of several woody species in the field, their main hydraulic properties were measured using a simple set-up. Hydraulic conductivity ("K[subscript h]") was calculated as the ratio…