Place-based education has been forwarded as a pedagogical approach that has the potential to contextualize learning, increase student engagement, and strengthen the relationship between schools and the broader community. Despite this promise, however, many teachers struggle to develop learning experiences that incorporate the key components of…

This dissertation studies how people describe emotions with language and how computers can simulate this descriptive behavior. Although many non-human animals can express their current emotions as social signals, only humans can communicate about emotions symbolically. This symbolic communication of emotion allows us to talk about emotions that we…

The ability to perform local anesthesia on dental patients is an important clinical skill for a dental hygienist. When learning this procedure in an academic situation, students often practice on their peers to build their skills. There are multiple reasons why the peer practice is not ideal; consequently, educators have sought the means to…

Embodied Conversational Agents (i.e., avatars; ECAs) are appearing in increasingly many everyday contexts, such as e-commerce, occupational training, and airport security. Also common to a typical person's daily life is persuasion. Whether being persuaded or persuading, the ability to change another person's attitude or behavior is a…

"Second Life," a 3D online immersive virtual environment, emerged in 2003 and was predicted to become the predominant online course delivery platform by 2013. Educational institutions initially rushed to create a presence in the "Second Life;" however, after 2009 those same institutions were disappointed by their experiences…

This study reports findings from a teaching experiment in which 4th grade children engaged in solving multiplication tasks with rectangular arrays in a computer environment. The environment provided flexible task-solving through dynamic virtual manipulatives (VMs) so children could use their existing knowledge of multiplication to complete array…

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the impact of the use of a virtual environment for learning Korean history on high school students' learning outcomes and attitudes toward virtual worlds (collaboration, engagement, general use of SL [Second Life], and immersion). In addition, this experiment examined the relationships…

Adult learners can develop leadership skills and competencies such as conflict management and negotiation skills. Virtual simulations are among the emerging new technologies available to adult educators and trainers to help adults develop various leadership competencies. This study explored the impact of conflict management tactics as well as…

In emergency response training, it is essential that the learners are able to apply their classroom knowledge and implement the practical and critical thinking skills they learned. A quasi-experimental methodology with a non-randomized control group and a pretest-posttest was used in this study to evaluate the training level of satisfaction as a…

Emergent popularity and student consumer/educational administrator demand for online technology in counselor education is also increasing the need to research its impact and potential effectiveness/ineffectiveness as a pedagogical tool. Research shows that the trend toward online coursework is likely to increase in the future and also that the new…

This study explored how avid users of "Second Life" ("SL") experience and make meaning of informal learning activities in virtual art museums and similar cultural spaces through their avatars. While recent literature has laid the groundwork for studying student engagement and formal learning, the lacuna of research bound by the…

Academic resilience has been widely researched in traditional and online educational settings, but it has not been sufficiently studied in three-dimensional (3D) virtual learning environments (VLEs). This inferential research used multiple regression to quantitatively investigate the extent to which psycho-educational factors including academic…

An understanding of the impact of user avatar alteration in relation to social presence is needed to fully realize the potential of Second Life for higher education usages, which the research literature reveals as an environment that provides increased social presence. Prior studies focused primarily on the impact of system design attributes on…

The purpose of the quantitative regression study was to explore and to identify relationships between attitudes toward use and perceptions of value of computer-based simulation programs, of college instructors, toward computer based simulation programs. A relationship has been reported between attitudes toward use and perceptions of the value of…

In order for simulations and games to be effective for learning, instructional designers must verify that the underlying computational models being used have an appropriate degree of fidelity to the conceptual models of their real-world counterparts. A simulation/game that provides incorrect feedback is likely to promote misunderstanding and…