The University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) is known for strong programming in the sciences and a teaching faculty at the forefront of science education and reform. Librarians at CU-Boulder, in collaboration with science faculty, are challenged to improve undergraduate science education. Using rare, historic, and artistic works from Special…

The primary objective of this research was to explore the experiences of undergraduate distance education students using sample audio versions (provided on compact disc) of the learning guides for their courses. The results of this study indicated that students responded positively to the opportunity to have word-for-word audio versions of their…

The purpose of this quantitative study is to compare a new assessment tool, the SkillsUSA Connect Assessment with the NOCTI assessment to determine which test results in more students achieving success. A quantitative study, designed to compare test scores of students taking the NOCTI assessment and new assessments from SkillsUSA, called the…

Literacy literate has become a contested and dynamic concept in the 21st century (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro & Cammack, 2004). Images are increasingly a primary means of communication and they have been emancipated and democratised in the post-literate age. Images are accessible, and are being endlessly reproduced and manipulated on a scale never seen…

This article describes two methods for use in program development and refinement. Problem mapping and forcefield analysis are explained with a real-world example about parenting education. Both methods are visual and consider multiple causes and effects of a problem. The methods are effective for clearly thinking through a problem, identifying…

Visualizations are an increasingly important part of scientific education and discovery. However, users often do not gain knowledge from them in a complete or efficient way. This article aims to direct research on visualizations in science education in productive directions by reviewing the evidence for widespread assumptions that learning styles,…

Young children notice and make use of illustrations in picture books as they read independently as evidenced by statements such as this one from Sarah's retelling of "The Wolf's Chicken Stew": "He couldn't catch him; so he did like this (child folds arms across chest) against the tree". Scholars in the field of children's literature have long…

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been integrated as an educational tool in the late 1950's and the beginnings of 1960's. Many research and conceptual papers over the past decades have documented its importance on enhancing students' education and learning across all subject areas and grade levels. Our twenty-first century modern…

The aim of this study was to examine the combined influences of infants' attention and use of social cues in the prediction of their language outcomes. This longitudinal study measured infants' visual attention on a distractibility task (11 months), joint attention (14 months), and language outcomes (word-object association, 14 months; MBCDI…

Over the last decade there has been considerable research and development work exploring how university teachers can document their teaching practice in such a way as to enable the sharing of ideas. The premise of this research work, referred to in the literature as learning designs, is if pedagogical practice can be documented in some readily…

Students entering medical college generally show vast diversity in their school education. It becomes the responsibility of teachers to motivate students and meet the needs of all diversities. One such measure is teaching students in their own preferred learning style. The present study was aimed to incorporate a learning style-based…

Over a two-year teacher-researcher project in New Zealand we used a mosaic of research methods (Clark, 2010) to capture the perspectives of staff, parents and children. As a team of teachers and academic researchers, we recorded and documented reconceptualised pedagogical practices that included active adult participation in a cluster of early…

Visual and auditory verbal learning using a selective reminding format was studied in a mixed clinical sample of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (n = 42), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (n = 83), velocardiofacial syndrome (n = 17) and neurotypicals (n = 38) using the Test of Memory and Learning to (1) more thoroughly…

Previous studies of motor learning have described the importance of cognitive processes during the early stages of learning; however, the precise nature of these processes and their neural correlates remains unclear. The present study investigated whether spatial working memory (SWM) contributes to visuomotor adaptation depending on the stage of…

How do humans use target-predictive contextual information to facilitate visual search? How are consistently paired scenic objects and positions learned and used to more efficiently guide search in familiar scenes? For example, humans can learn that a certain combination of objects may define a context for a kitchen and trigger a more efficient…