An auto-calibrated online evaluation system for student knowledge assessment was developed and has been implemented at the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. The system is available for students’ end-of-course evaluation on physical chemistry, microbiology and toxicology, and materials chemistry topics and it can be used at the test center. Th...

We report theoretical and numerical evaluations of the phase diagram for patchy colloidal particles of new generation. We show that the reduction of the number of bonded nearest neighbors offers the possibility of generating liquid states (i.e., states with temperature T lower than the liquid-gas critical temperature) with a vanishing occupied packing fraction (phi), a case which can not be rea...

One goal of postsecondary education is to assist students in developing expert-level understanding. Previous attempts to encourage expert-level understanding of phylogenetic analysis in college science classrooms have largely focused on isolated, or "one-shot," in-class activities. Using a deliberate practice instructional approach, we designed a set of five assignments for a 300-level plant sy...

How do elements of course structure (i.e., the frequency of assessments, as well as the sequencing and weight of course resources) influence the usage patterns of electronic textbooks (etexts) in introductory physics courses? We are analyzing the access logs of courses at Michigan State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which deployed etexts as primary or secondary texts...

We present results from early learning programs in six African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. In partnership with ministries of education, RTI International has worked within government systems to support the design and deployment of locally contextualized materials, training, and assessment tools, with the goal of improving outcomes for early learners in pri...

A set of instructional materials on Total Quality Management livestockpractices was evaluated by preposttest measures of attitudes. The posttest was administered one year after the pretest, and students were paired on three measures, gender, grade in school, and whether or not they raised livestock. Contrary to researchers ; expectations, attitudes after use of the materials tended to be lower ...

This article discusses meeting the challenges encountered in changing a paper-based, interactive immunization delivery curriculum into an online, self-paced format. The program, TIDE (Teaching Immunization Delivery and Evaluation), was developed through collaborative efforts of medical educators and content experts with initial funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Am...