This paper describes design of an interactive learning environment to increase student achievement in middle schools by addressing students’ preconceptions, and promoting purposeful social collaboration, distributed cognition, and contextual learning. The paper presents a framework that guided our design efforts to immerse all students in a progression of guided-inquiry hands-on activities. Stu...

Activities that promote student invention can appear inefficient, because students do not generate canonical solutions, and therefore the students may perform badly on standard assessments. Two studies on teaching descriptive statistics to 9th-grade students examined whether invention activities may prepare students to learn. Study 1 found that invention activities, when coupled with subsequent...

Cognitive load theory suggests that many conventional inStructional formats are ineffective as they involve extraneous cognitive activities, which interfere with learning. The splitattention effect provides one example of the consequences of inappropriate cognitive activities. caused by poor instructional design. Learners are often forced to split their attention between and mentally integrate ...

Educational games bear a close resemblance to Intelligent Tutoring Systems and narrative centered learning environments since they all use technology to enhance learning, and deliver instructional material to students by leveraging the attractive features of computers, software, and mobile devices. However many DGBL environments fail to balance the game (learning) challenges to the skill level ...

The advent of technologies has changed our very idea of what a course is (Bates & Poole, 2003). Instructors in Higher Education are now daily supported by instructional designers or educational technology experts that provide advice for integrating Web-based activities, videoconference sessions, high-quality digital media presentations, etc. in their teaching activities. The process of designin...

the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of different methods of self-talk (motivational, instructional, and combined) on acquisition and learning of a motor perceptional task (dart) and physical efficacy in female students aged between 13 and 18. 48 female students (mean age 15.46 yr) who were novice at dart throwing voluntarily participated in this study. participants were d...