This study examined the effects of visual analogies on learner outcomes in "Phonology for ESL Teachers," a challenging course within a master's degree program at a prominent university in the southeastern United States. To reduce student anxiety, facilitate Saturday classes, and bridge from the known to the unknown, concrete images…

Using animated computer-generated graphics to assist instruction has recently attracted the attention of educators and educational researchers. The specific focus of this study is to compare the influence of animated visuals with static visuals on college students' understanding of organic reaction mechanisms in chemistry. This study also focuses…

Nine studies showed a bidirectional link (a) between a global processing style and generation of similarities and (b) between a local processing style and generation of dissimilarities. In Experiments 1-4, participants were primed with global versus local perception styles and then asked to work on an allegedly unrelated generation task. Across…

It is well documented that people are less interested in studying plants than animals. We tested whether university students would selectively recall more animal images than plant images even when equally-nameable plant and animal images were presented for equal lengths of time. Animal and plant images were pre-tested and 14 animal-plant pairs…

It was hypothesized that in multimedia information applications a visual component can add value to otherwise audio-only clips. Subjects rated clips used in published CD-ROMs and how much they remembered was also tested. In one set of clips, the visual component was removed, in a second the audio was removed and a third set was unedited. The…

We discuss the introduction and teaching of partial differential equations (heat and wave equations) via modeling physical phenomena, using a new approach that encompasses constructing difference equations and implementing these in a spreadsheet, numerically solving the partial differential equations using the numerical differential equation…

We developed the three-dimensional visualization software, Tonal Interface to MacroMolecules or TIMMol, for studying atomic coordinates of protein structures. Key features include audio tones indicating x, y, z location, identification of the cursor location in one-dimensional and three-dimensional space, textual output that can be easily linked…

Artworks that are circular in nature are often referred to as mandalas. "Mandala" means center, circle, or circumference. Mandalas are created in many cultures for a variety of reasons, most of which are related to self-expression, ritual, and religion. In this article, the author describes how her students created mandalas. She also provides…

The "Adding Insult to Imagery? Artistic Responses to Censorship and Mass-Media" exhibition opened in January 16, 2006, Kipp Gallery on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus. Eleven gallery-based works, 9 videos, and 10 web-based artworks comprised the show; each dealt with the relationship between censorship and mass mediated…

This study investigated the relationship between parenting stress and relational conditioning. Fourteen students who were not mothers, 14 mothers who reported high parenting stress and 14 mothers with low parenting stress completed two matching-to-sample (MTS) computer tasks, each requiring formation of three 3-member classes. The first MTS task…

As certain areas of practice in higher education shift online, the work of learners and teachers increasingly takes place within the domain of the image. The "digital turn" we are experiencing, both in higher education and in the wider culture, accompanies an "iconic turn" in which the logic of the image as it emerges on our screens has a growing…

Due to the rapid advancements in mobile communication and wireless technologies, many researchers and educators have started to believe that these emerging technologies can be leveraged to support formal and informal learning opportunities. Mobile language learning can be effectively implemented by delivering learning content through mobile…

Paradigms used to study the time course of the redundant signals effect (RSE; J. O. Miller, 1986) and temporal order judgments (TOJs) share many important similarities and address related questions concerning the time course of sensory processing. The author of this article proposes and tests a new aggregate diffusion-based model to quantitatively…

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…

This study examines the cognitive costs of navigation aids in a hypermedia learning task. In a 2(navigable vs. non-navigable) x 2(map vs. content list) experimental design cognitive requirements were measured by users' eye movement data. Additionally, data from users' navigation operations, knowledge acquisition, and subjective evaluation of the…