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Full-Text Articles in Education

100 Books To Think About, Cynthia M. Kisby Jan 2020

100 Books To Think About, Cynthia M. Kisby

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The news is full of stories about intelligent people, at the top of their game, who hurtle into public humiliation. I dubbed this fascinating phenomenon the theory of “smart and dumb.” Sometimes we’re thinking, and sometimes clearly, we are not. My quest to understand these quirks of human nature shaped a lifetime of research, and I am not alone in my curiosity. People seek answers to their own compelling life issues including health, financial, and interpersonal topics. Librarians research solutions. Self-care books, such as those summarized here, remain popular because people always appreciate advice on how to succeed, get rich, …


Medulla: A 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Game That Teaches Basic Brain Structure And Function, Joey R. Fanfarelli, Stephanie Vie Sep 2015

Medulla: A 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Game That Teaches Basic Brain Structure And Function, Joey R. Fanfarelli, Stephanie Vie

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores the design and instructional effectiveness of Medulla, an educational game meant to teach brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Developed in the retro-style platformer genre, Medulla uses two-dimensional gameplay with pixel-based graphics to engage students in learning content related to the brain, information which is often pre-requisite to more rigorous psychological study. A pretest posttest design was used in an experiment assessing Medulla’s ability to teach psychology content. Results indicated content knowledge was significantly higher on the posttest than the pretest, with a large effect size. Medulla appears to be an effective learning tool. These …