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Item Gender bias in virtual learning environments: An exploratory study(Wiley, 2012-03-01) Lin, M. C.; Tutwiler, M. S.; Chang, C. Y.Item Examining for association between candidate gene polymorphisms in the dopamine pathway and academic achievement in a Chinese cohort(2010-05-30) Yeh, T. K.; Chang, C. Y.; Hu, C.Y.; Li, R. H.; Cheng, C. T.; Chen, M. C.; Li, C. H.This study aimed to explore the association between candidate gene polymorphisms in the dopamine pathway and and students’ academic performance (g factor). The results indicated that COMT Val158Met polymorphism is associated with academic performance. These findings provide evidence that affective factors might overwhelm cognitive abilities in high-stake tests.Item Determining virtual environment "fit": The relationship between navigation style in a virtual field trip, student self-reported desire to visit the field trip site in the real world, and the purposes of science education(Springer Netherlands, 2013-06-01) Tutwiler, M. S.; Lin, M. C.; Chang, C. Y.In this study, a follow-up analysis of the data reported in Lin et al. (Learn Media Technol. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2011.629660, 2011), we investigated the relationship between student use of a virtual field trip (VFT) system and the probability of students reporting wanting to visit the national park site upon which the VFT was modeled, controlling for content knowledge and prior visits to the park. Students who were able to navigate the VFT in teams were more likely than their peers who had the system demonstrated by a teacher to want to visit the national park. In addition, students with higher pre-intervention content knowledge were more likely to want to visit the national park than their peers with lower pre-test scores, in both the teacher demonstration and student co-navigation conditions.Item Digital teaching portfolio in higher education: Examining colleagues' perceptions to inform implementation strategies(Elsevier, 2014-01-01) Fong, Ricci W.-T.; Lee, John C.-K.; Chang, C. Y.; Zhang, Z.; Ngai, Alexandra C.-Y.; Lim, C. P.This paper examined the perceptions of academic and teaching staff about digital teaching portfolio to inform how implementation strategies in higher education can be made more effective. In light of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), a 38-item scale was adapted to tap into eight dimensions of their perceptions toward digital teaching portfolio, namely, Perceived Usefulness for Personal Benefit, Perceived Usefulness for Social Benefit, Ease of Use, Issues of Concern about Time, Issues of Concern about Technology and Support, Intention to Use Portfolio, and Computer Efficacy in using digital teaching portfolio by Self-Exploration, and Computer Efficacy in using digital teaching portfolio with Professional Guidance. A total of 132 teaching staff from two tertiary institutions from Hong Kong and Taiwan completed the questionnaire. The findings offer insights into how strategies for implementing digital teaching portfolio can be made more effective when the target users' perceptions are taken into account. Implications regarding how buy-in can be established and how institutional policies and culture can play a role in facilitating the outcomes of the implementation would be discussed.Item Evaluation of a school-based science curriculum development initiative: The Sci-Tech Mind and Humane Heart Project(2010-01-22) Chang, C. Y.; Chen, C.-L.D.; Chang, Y. H.Item Association of polymorphisms in genes involved in the dopaminergic pathway with blood pressure and plasma uric acid levels in Chinese females(Springer Verlag (Germany), 2010-12-01) Yeh, T. K.; Yeh, T. C.; Weng, C. F.; Shih, B. F.; Tsao, H. J.; Hsiao, C.H.; Chuang, F. T.; Hu, C. Y.; Chang, C. Y.Since the high degree of heritability of physiological traits was demonstrated by twin and adoption studies, contemporary researchers in the fields of clinical medicine, behavioral science, and genetics have acknowledged the crucial role of genetic factors in human physiology. The study described herein explores the association between physiological parameters and the dopaminergic system using molecular genetic techniques. A total of 558 Taiwanese female volunteers, ranging from 16 to 17 years, were recruited. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes involved in the dopaminergic pathway were selected for analysis. Systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure were associated significantly with the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism and the dopamine β-hydroxylase (DBH) C1021T polymorphism. Furthermore, plasma uric acid was associated significantly with the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. Our study suggests the possible involvement of genetic polymorphisms in COMT and DBH in the regulation of blood pressure and plasma uric acid.Item Minimizing the extraneous cognitive load in learning: Integrating interactive functions into instructional animation(2010-06-15) Chien, Y. T.; Chang, C. Y.Item Performance Comparison for Educational Institutes –Identifying Sub-Field Characteristics by Journal Clustering for Better Ranking(2012-09-08) Tseng, Y. H.; Chang, C. Y.Item Exploring high school students' views regarding the nature of scientific theory: A study in Taiwan(Springer, 2010-03-01) Wen, M. L.; Kuo, P. C.; Chang, C. Y.; Tsai, C. C.The purpose of this study was to explore high school students' views regarding the nature scientific theory via a context of competing theories for the extinction of dinosaurs. It is believed that views regarding the nature of scientific theory are closely related to personal epistemologies toward science. A questionnaire with four open-ended questions was designed to investigate students' views about some aspects of the nature of scientific theory. The results of analyzing written responses from 621 Taiwanese high school students indicated that more than 60% the students understood that scientific theories were subject to change when new observations or interpretations were found. In responding to the reason for having two theories explaining the extinction of dinosaurs, many students were able to recognize the insufficiency of evidence for both theories, indicating that the students understood that science was empirical-based. This study also found that almost all the students held the concept that "science is theoryladen." We believed that during the processes of responding to the questions designed for study, students underwent reflective-thinking processes through the controversial context provided by the study, thus expressing the idea that "science is theory-laden." Gender and subject preference were also included in this study. The results suggest that both factors play significant roles in the particular theory the students supported.Item Mining concept maps from news stories for measuring civic scientific literacy in media(Elsevier, 2010-08-01) Tseng, Y. H.; Chang, C. Y.; Chang Rundgren, S. N.; Rundgren, C. J.Motivated by a long-term goal in education for measuring Taiwanese civic scientific literacy in media (SLiM), this work reports the detailed techniques to efficiently mine a concept map from 2 years of Chinese news articles (901,446 in total) for SLiM instrument development. From the Chinese news stories, key terms (important words or phrases), known or new to existing lexicons, were first extracted by a simple, yet effective, rule-based algorithm. They were subjected to an association analysis based on their co-occurrence in sentences to reveal their term-to-term relationship. A given list of 3657 index terms from science textbooks were then matched against the term association network. The resulting term network (including 95 scientific terms) was visualized in a concept map to scaffold the instrument developers. When developing an item, the linked term pair not only suggests the topic for the item due to the clear context being mutually reinforced by each other, but also the content itself because of the rich background provided by the recurrent snippets in which they co-occur. In this way, the resulting instrument (comprised of 50 items) reflect the scientific knowledge revealed in the daily news stories, meeting the goal for measuring civic scientific literacy in media. In addition, the concept map mined from the texts served as a convenient tool for item classification, developer collaboration, and expert review and discussion.