Can learning of mental imagery skills for visualizing shapes be accelerated with feature masking? Chemistry, physics fine arts, military tactics, and laparoscopic surgery often depend on mentally ...visualizing shapes in their absence. Does working with ‘spatial feature-masks’ (skeletal shapes, missing key identifying portions) encourage people to use visualization strategies? This experimental study tested that hypothesis using an online computer game involving rotating and stamping a 3D cube on a 2D pattern. According to a chi-squared test, people who trained with 3D feature-masks reported using significantly more visual imagery strategies on a related visualization posttest. Spatial feature-masks provide a new building block for instructional designers to address educational outcomes involving visual imagery of shapes.
This study examined the instructor experience of teaching college courses (discussion-based and mathematics) over the Web, versus in the classroom, in terms of teaching, social issues, and emergent ...issues such as media effects. We interviewed, by e-mail and telephone, 22 college instructors who taught in both formats. We categorized interview fragments to highlight trends. Results indicated Web courses have profoundly different communication than classroom courses, resulting in greater student-instructor equality, explicitness of written instructions required, greater workloads for instructors and deeper thinking in discussions. Initial feelings of anonymity give way later to online identities. Disciplines involving reading, writing, and discussion seem well suited to online education. Mathematics instructors feel the shortcomings of Web-based distance learning environments more than do instructors from more writing-based disciplines. A follow-up needs-assessment of distance mathematics instructors indicated current Web distance education environments do not provide the basic communication tools for mathematics courses.
This study investigated whether infusing "causal" story elements into mathematical word problems improves student performance. In one experiment in the USA and a second in USA, Finland and Turkey, ...undergraduate elementary education majors worked word problems in three formats: 1) standard (minimal verbiage), 2) potential causation (causal and mathematical content overlap), and 3) climax resolution (causal and mathematical content combined in a way in which story outcome is discernable). Causal story elements in word problems, written in the USA, improved performance in USA and Finish students, but not Turkey, on word problems with some spatial content. Based on the finding that infusing causal stories played out differently in different cultures we concluded that situation models might be at least as primary as schemas in solving word problems.
This study compared interaction with a computer vs. observation as learning situations for low and high ability student's learning of spatial visualization and geometric transformations. Thirty-two ...fifth grade boys took the Differential Aptitude Test, Space Relations Subset (DAT), and then participated in the experiment. Pre-test and post-test were static spatial visualization problems using polyominos. During treatment, subjects were paired, one interactively solving computer-based polyomino puzzles, the other observing a yoked monitor in a separate room. Think-aloud protocol was used throughout. Overall, no significant differences were found between the two conditions. However, high achievers on the DAT benefited significantly more from observing (p.5). Low achievers benefited marginally more from the interactive condition, showing an increased incidence of holistic mental rotation strategy following the interactive condition. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.)
This study investigates and describes the current instructor experience of teaching college courses over the Web (versus in face-to-face formats) in terms of the teaching strategies, social issues, ...and emergent issues such as media effects. We interviewed 22 college instructors who had taught in both formats. Four of the interviews were made by telephone and eighteen by e-mail. Interview fragments were categorized and counted for frequency to highlight emerging trends. Results indicate that Web-based classes have a profoundly different communication style than face-to-face classes. This has far-reaching consequences for on-line classes in terms of greater equality between students and instructors, greater explicitness of written instructions required, greater workloads for instructors and deeper thinking manifested in discussions, initial feelings of anonymity giving way later to emerging on-line identities. Authors propose a model with two competing systems, isolation effects versus community effects.
The prospect of making computer games has often be used to “hook” students into learning programming or cognitive skills. There is, however, little research on using computer game design classes to ...teach computer skills. This article provides an answer to the question: Can a computer game design course employing the new generation of game authoring tools set middle school students on the path of learning a broad and sophisticated range of computer skills? The answer, based on the senior author's experiences teaching such a course eight times is, Yes. Students learned: an authoring system specifically designed for creating computer games; Windows 95 file management and other basic computer literacy skills; how to integrate outputs from several programs in one project—a form of computer literacy vital for multi-media designers; “if-then-else” logic; and rudimentary knowledge of programming with real-time events. Students also mastered a process for creating unique games and developed skills as autonomous learners.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between active control of spatial information and strategies used for spatial visualization. Spatial visualization is an important factor for ...success in geometry, mathematics, and other academic fields. Flexibility of strategy choice is important for successful performance of spatial visualization tasks. In certain situations, active control based in manipulatives, computer games, and interactive computer environments facilitates improvements in spatial visualization. This study investigated how these improvements relate to strategy change. The study also investigated how high and low active control compare for learning spatial visualization skills. With the advent of interactive computer environments for teaching mathematics, and geometry, these are important questions. Prior to the experiment, participants were given a standardized test of spatial visualization. The experiment used a pretest, treatment, posttest format. The pretest and posttest were comprised of static spatial visualization problems. The treatment comprised of two conditions, high and low active control. The high active control participants interactively solved the spatial problems in a computer game-like environment. The low active control participants observed passively on a yoked monitor. Pretest, treatment and posttest problems all used polyominos. Numerical analysis and think-aloud protocol analysis were used to investigate the differences in how participants subjected to high and low active control conditions compared on the subsequent static spatial visualization task. Neither high nor low active control was uniformly better for learning the static spatial visualization task used in the pretest and posttest. Participants, already relatively skilled in spatial visualization, tended to benefit more from the low active control condition. Participants, less skilled, benefited from the high active control condition. The less spatially skilled participants who benefited from the high active control condition, apparently made their improvement through the inclusion of holistic mental rotation into their repertoire of spatial visualization strategies.
This paper describes the addition of Collision-Induced Absorption (CIA) into the HITRAN compilation. The data from different experimental and theoretical sources have been cast into a consistent ...format and formalism. The implementation of these new spectral data into the HITRAN database is invaluable for modeling and interpreting spectra of telluric and other planetary atmospheres as well as stellar atmospheres. In this implementation for HITRAN, CIAs of N2, H2, O2, CO2, and CH4 due to various collisionally interacting atoms or molecules are presented. Some CIA spectra are given over an extended range of frequencies, including several H2 overtone bands that are dipole-forbidden in the non-interacting molecules. Temperatures from tens to thousands of Kelvin are considered, as required, for example, in astrophysical analyses of objects, including cool white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, M dwarfs, cool main sequence stars, solar and extra-solar planets, and the formation of so-called first stars.
► Comprehensive compilation of collision-induced absorption cross-sections. ► CIAs of N2, H2, O2, CO2, and CH4 with various perturbing species are considered. ► Experimental and theoretical data are cast into consistent user-friendly format. ► A much-needed tool for atmospheric and astrophysics research is developed.
