Utah Virtual Lab: JAVA interactivity for teaching science and statistics on line.
The Utah on-line Virtual Lab is a JAVA program run dynamically off a database. It is embedded in StatCenter (www.psych.utah.edu/learn/statsampler.html), an on-line collection of tools and text for teaching and learning statistics. Instructors author a statistical virtual reality that simulates theories and data in a specific research focus area by defining independent, predictor, and dependent variables and the relations among them. Students work in an on-line virtual environment to discover the principles of this simulated reality: They go to a library, read theoretical overviews and scientific puzzles, and then go to a lab, design a study, collect and analyze data, and write a report. Each student's design and data analysis decisions are computer-graded and recorded in a database; the written research report can be read by the instructor or by other students in peer groups simulating scientific conventions.
Malloy
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University of Utah, Department of Psychology, 380 S. 1520 E., Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0251, USA. malloy@psych.utah.edu
Jensen
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D006801:Humans; D012586:Science / Q000193:education*; D012984:Software; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000193:education*; D013663:Teaching; D014584:User-Computer Interface