This paper presents the use of immersive virtual reality systems in the educational intervention with Asperger students. The starting points of this study are features of these students' cognitive style that requires an explicit teaching style supported by visual aids and highly structured environments. The proposed immersive virtual reality…

When the goal of group activities is to support long-term learning, the task of designing well-thought-out collaborative learning (CL) scenarios is an important key to success. To help students adequately acquire and develop their knowledge and skills, a teacher can plan a scenario that increases the probability for learning to occur. Such a…

The six papers in this special issue of "Computers and Education" honoring Professor David H. Jonassen are diverse in nature. They also reflect differing interpretations of the implications of Jonassen's work for research and development focused on instructional models and the factors influencing instruction as well as the directions for future…

Most educators claim that problem solving is important, but they take very different perspective on it and there is little agreement on how it should be taught. This article aims to sort out the different perspectives and discusses problem solving as a goal, a method, and a skill. As a goal, problem solving should not be limited to well-structured…

Based on cognitive load theory, it is well known that when studying a diagram that includes explanatory text, optimal learning occurs when the text is physically positioned close to the diagram as it eliminates the need for learners to split their attention between the two sources of information. What is not known is the effect on learning when…

This paper reports a study conducted to formally evaluate a social problem-solving skills game during the start of the development to ensure that the desired game attributes were successfully embodied in the final game. Two methods, heuristic evaluation and participatory design, were adopted to assess whether the features of the game pose…

Deaf children have significant difficulties in comprehending written text. This is mainly due to the hearing loss that prevents them from being exposed to oral language when they were an infant. However, it is also due to the type of educational intervention they are faced with, which accustoms them to decoding single words and isolated sentences,…

Numerous studies have proposed and implemented various innovative designs of mobile learning practices, and several pedagogical affordances of mobile technologies in different subject domains have also been suggested. This study proposes a notion for helping instructors design an innovative mobile learning practice in their subject domain. The…

The integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) aims at enriching the learning activities that educational practitioners may design and enact. This paper presents GLUE!, an architecture that enables the lightweight integration of multiple existing external tools in multiple existing VLEs. GLUE! fosters this integration by…

In recent years, social networking services (SNSs), for example, Facebook, have shown exponential growth in their number of users. Witnessing the popularity of these SNSs, educational researchers have also explored the potential educational value of using SNSs. Despite the few studies that have investigated learners' attitudes toward and the…

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) support students in learning a complex problem-solving skill. One feature that makes an ITS architecturally complex, and hard to build, is support for strategy freedom, that is, the ability to let students pursue multiple solution strategies within a given problem. But does greater freedom mean that students…

This study examined whether inspecting and constructing different part-task-specific visualizations differentially affects learning. To this end, a complex business-economics problem was structured into three phase-related part-tasks: (1) determining core concepts, (2) proposing multiple solutions, and (3) coming to a single solution. Each phase…

This paper presents our recent experiences with the design of game-like applications in 3-D virtual environments as well as its impact on student motivation and learning. Therefore our paper starts with a brief analysis of the motivational aspects of videogames and virtual worlds (VWs). We then go on to explore the possible benefits of both in the…

Given the rising popularity of content management systems (CMSs) in higher education, the current study investigates how students use tools in CMS supported courses. More specifically, the current study investigates how students regulate their tool-use throughout the course period by considering the moment tools are used. This temporal dimension…

In this paper, an automated lesson generation system for guiding beginners to learn basic dance movements is proposed. It analyzes the dance to generate a two-phase lesson which can provide a suitable cognitive load thus offering an efficient learning experience. In the first phase, the dance is divided into small pieces which are patterns, and…