The authors develop a two-stage classroom experiment to illustrate convergence to long-run equilibrium in a market where price-taking firms are capacity-constrained. Once equilibrium in the first stage is established, capacity constraints are introduced by imposing discontinuities in the fixed costs of several firms. The experiment demonstrates…

Contribution: The design of an operating system (OS) experiment course with a gentle learning curve is proposed and a scalable OS experiment platform supporting learning behavior analysis is presented. Background: In the teaching practice of the OS experiment course, several problems were faced. First, the learning curve for the students is too…

Learning to argue is prerequisite to solving complex problems in groups, especially when they are multidisciplinary and collaborate online. Environments for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) can be designed to facilitate argumentative knowledge construction. This study investigates how argumentative knowledge construction in…

We explored size-distance scaling with a demonstration based on the classic Holway-Boring experiment. Undergraduate psychology majors estimated the sizes of two glowing paper circles under two conditions. In the first condition, the environment was dark and, with no depth cues available, participants ranked the circles according to their angular…

This classroom experiment uses double oral auction credit markets to illustrate the role of banks as financial intermediaries. The experiment demonstrates how risk affects market interest rates in the presence of asymmetric information. It provides fodder for a discussion of the moral-hazard problem of deposit insurance and its impact on depositor…

The discipline-based education research (DBER) report from the National Research Council (2012) highlighted the existence of a research-practice gap in science instruction in higher education and the need to identify strategies to close it. This study hypothesizes that one potential factor is instructors' access to research-based…

Classroom experiments in economics continue to increase in popularity. While early experiments were often hand-run in class, now computerized online experiments are also widely available. Using a quasiexperimental approach, the authors investigated whether any difference in student achievement (as measured by course scores and the "Test of…

Several years ago we presented an experimental, discovery-learning approach to the active learning of greedy algorithms. This paper presents GreedEx, a visualization tool developed to support this didactic method. The paper states the design goals of GreedEx, makes explicit the major design decisions adopted, and describes its main characteristics…

The objective of the instructional experiment was to examine if the use of thinking styles is flexible in traditional and hypermedia learning environments, and if a hypermedia learning environment possesses obvious advantages than a traditional environment in adapting to students with different thinking styles. The participant university students…

Comprehension assessment is an essential tool in classroom learning. However, the judgment often relies on experience of an instructor who makes observation of students' behavior during the lessons. We argue that students should report their own comprehension explicitly in a classroom. With students' comprehension made available at the slide…

Two studies examined the impact of collaborative testing on exam scores for psychology students at a moderately selectivue Midwestern University. The first study was a replication of previous classroom research where students could choose to test with a partner or alone. No significant differences were found between those taking tests alone or…

Background: One of the unfortunate side effects of the industrial revolution has been the constant assault of the environment with various forms of pollution. Lately, this issue has taken a more critical dimension as prospects of global climate change and irreversible ecosystem damage are becoming a reality. Purpose: College graduates (especially…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of modality and gender on learning from a computer-based matrix graphic organizer. A 2 x 2 factorial experiment was created by crossing two presentation modes (visual text vs. spoken text) and gender. Dependent measures included transfer and comprehension tests. Results revealed a significant modality by…

Two experiments explored the role of vicarious "self" explanations in facilitating student learning gains during computer-presented instruction. In Exp. 1, college students with low or high knowledge on Newton's laws were tested in four conditions: (a) monologue (M), (b) questions (Q), (c) explanation (E), and (d) question + explanation (Q + E).…

To determine whether a classroom experiment improved the learning of experimental method, at the start of the semester 2 introductory psychology classes took a 10-question multiple-choice pretest on experimental method. Two days later, before the instructor covered the relevant material in the course, 1 class took part in a classroom experiment on…