Reports on a study to determine if having students write about the work required in doing three types of exercises from elementary algebraic fractions would affect the students' error patterns on quizzes. The study involved six developmental studies in elementary algebra classes. (PK)

Malawian children and young adults displayed sensitivity to static information for depth when stimulus objects subtended equal visual angles. When the more distant object was larger but subtended a smaller visual angle than the nearer, subjects tended to base judgments on retinal size. Motion paralax information increased accuracy of judgments of…

The literature on proportional reasoning is reviewed. After methodology is discussed, strategies used to solve proportion problems, variables that influence performance, and training studies are each considered. (MNS)

Describes a study of those areas that experience suggests are major sources of error for native English-speakers studying German. Students' writing samples of different proficiency levels were analysed to establish (1) changes in error rate per student over the three semesters and (2) degree of negative transfer for each group. (SED)

Discusses the collected research on free modifiers and "minor sentences," or "formal fragments." Asks English teachers for less concentration on initial placement of modifiers, less rigidity concerning fragments, and more practice with punctuating final free modifiers. (RL)

Describes observations, written samples, and interviews of (n=24) high school teachers learning concepts of group, subgroup, coset, normality, and quotient group in an Abstract Algebra course. General observations are made about the role of errors and misconceptions in light of an action-process-schema framework. (32 references) (MKR)

To help college teachers assist students in approaching reference materials to obtain citations, basic points that students should identify within citations are specified, and useful classroom techniques and materials are suggested. Common errors in search strategies are also noted. Some suggestions are made for selection of indexes for searching.…

A survey of 144 first-year law students from 78 undergraduate institutions investigated their level of cultural literacy. On average, students identified 24.1 percent of the 250 test items correctly, with widely varying error patterns by subject. It is concluded that students come to law school without enough factual information about our culture.…

Describes a study conducted in 1988 that investigated book availability in an academic library by providing a quantitative measure of library performance based on outcomes of card catalog searches and that can serve as a model for ongoing assessment in the library. Results are compared with earlier research from 1986. (Contains 12 references.)…

In this article we describe the initial investigations that we have conducted on student data collected from a web-based tutoring tool. We have used some data mining techniques such as association rule and symbolic data analysis, as well as traditional SQL queries to gain further insight on the students' learning and deduce information to improve…

This article emerges from a recent review of evidence, conducted by the authors and others, on the lifelong barriers to widening participation in higher education in England. This has led us to a consideration of the quality and relevance of the research activity in this large field of endeavour, and to the creation of a typology of the kinds of…

Two studies were conducted at the Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU) to determine possible uses of errors and omissions on surveys of incoming and freshmen college students. The subjects of the first study were 1,927 individuals who had applied for admission to SLU and attended freshman orientation in the summer of 1989. Blanks and incorrect…

Argues that a computer-based programming tutor for novice programmers needs to take into account not only the types and frequency of bugs found in the programs, but the intentions and knowledge state of the programmer. A first version of such a program was developed on the basis of the bug types found in a number of pencil-and-paper studies with…

This report describes PROUST, a computer-based system for online analyses and understanding of PASCAL programs written by novice programmers, which takes as input a program and a non-algorithmic description of the program requirements and finds the most likely mapping between the requirements and the code. Both the theory and processing techniques…

A study examined the patterns of error in the preterite and imperfect tenses in the written Spanish of native English-speaking college students. Errors found in the midterm examination were analyzed to determine whether they were due to incorrect tense, incorrect form of the tense, or both. It was predicted that many students would choose…