Richard L. Lamb

East Carolina University | ECU · Department of Special Education, Foundations & Research

Successful STEM learning depends on the interaction of affect, cognition, and application of ideas. Simply put students who are unwilling to persist in STEM based endeavors do not suddenly develop into scientists, mathematicians, engineers or computer scientists, nor do they seek out STEM related courses or STEM based careers. The purpose of this s...

Educational games and simulations provide teachers with powerful tools for teaching students in the sciences. Within the broad category of educational gaming, there are several types of games to include Serious Educational Games (SEG), Educational Simulations (ES), and Serious Games (SG). The purpose of this meta-analysis is to characterize and com...

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of persistence within STEM learning environments as a function of cumulative stress and latent trauma. The biopsychosocial impact of prolonged stressors due to hostile environments and academic demands has deleterious health effects on historically underrepresented students who enter STEM disciplin...

Verbal communication to relay information between students and the teacher, i.e., talk, lies at the heart of all science classrooms. This study investigated and began to characterize the neurological basis for the talk between science teachers and students in terms of speaker-listener coupling in a naturalistic setting. Speaker-listener coupling is...

Virtual reality (VR) has received considerable attention related to its use in teacher development over the last decade. Despite this attention, there is insufficient understanding of how specific underlying cognitive system responses and autonomic nervous system responses moderate the use of VR and the associated learning outcomes in the developme...

Virtual Reality (VR) is a three-dimensional digital environment which allows multiple degrees of freedom for the user to interact with the environment and engage in immersive interactions. Current foci in STEM Education disciplines require student to understand, manipulate, and incorporate complex and abstract ideas and observations. Some of the en...

Mathematics teachers often work with students to develop strategies for solving complex and cognitively demanding tasks as they learn mathematics. Under existing task analysis frameworks, it is suggested that teachers examine cognitive demand as a means to assign appropriate mathematics tasks to students. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to...

Current data sources used for the prediction of student outcomes average about 55% accuracy and require a significant amount of input data and time for researchers and educators to produce predictive models of student outcomes. The aim of this study is to examine how neurocognitive data collected via functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) ma...

Virtual reality (VR) as a tool to build wellbeing for students with latent trauma is being examined in multiple contexts. The purpose of this study was to compare modalities of treatment, namely, VR-enhanced therapy, face-to-face therapy without VR and wait-list time-delayed control. Participants were 69 students selected from a high-needs urban sc...

This study explored whether participation in a high school STEM game design enrichment program influenced students’ discussions of their project goals and success. In our sample, seven students participated in the game design program, while ten received traditional instruction. Post-interviews were conducted using a semi-structured protocol in orde...

Authors analyzed data from counseling trainees in a skills course to examine self-efficacy and stigma. It was hypothesized that self-efficacy would increase, self-stigma would decrease, and that increased self-efficacy would decrease self-stigma in CTs. Increased self-efficacy was statistically significant, but self-efficacy changes did not predict...

This study explored whether participation in a high school STEM game design enrichment program influenced students’ discussions of project goals, motivation, and success. Seventeen high school students were included in the study, seven participated in the game design program, while ten were traditional students. Post-interviews were conducted using...

The primary barrier to understanding visual and abstract information in STEM fields is representational competence the ability to generate, transform, analyze and explain representations. The relationship is known between the foundational visual literacy and the domain specific science literacy, however how science literacy is a function of science...

In recent years, the application of virtual reality (VR) in learning environments has received considerable attention from educators. The attention occurs because VR can supply greater realism and immersion in the science classroom. VR is used to support laboratory-based instruction in open 3D environments. VR is defined as the use of three dimensi...

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Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is estimated to have an incidence rate of about 3.4% in children and adolescent populations. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to identify and quantify the effect of FASD on functional status in areas such Executive Function. This meta-analysis examines 46 studies comparing 2,307 participants across a range...

Rapid technological advances, particularly recent artificial intelligence (AI) revolutions such as digital assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri), self-driving cars, and cobots and robots, have changed human lives and will continue to have even bigger impact on our future society. Some of those AI inventions already shocked people across the world by wield...

Research in aviation and driving has highlighted the importance of training as an effective approach to reduce the costs associated with the supervisory role of the human in automated systems. However, only a few studies have investigated the effect of training on highly automated driving. Moreover, available interactive trainings are mostly based...

This study examines the role of virtual reality (VR) in the promotion of writing with greater complexity and lexical density. Using a combination of neuroimaging and traditional measures, the author characterizes differences in writing complexity and lexical density scores across four different pedagogical modalities: VR alone, VR followed by a tex...

Many teacher preparation programs include field experiences in order to expose preservice teachers to the complexity and unpredictability of the classrooms in which they will be expected to practice. The application of virtual reality (VR) has received considerable research and popular attention. During construction of understanding in preservice t...

The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying cognitive attributes used during the design and development of science-based serious educational games. Study methods rely on a modification of cognitive diagnostics, item response theory, and Bayesian estimation with traditional statistical techniques such as factor analysis and model fit an...

The purpose of the present study was to investigate, compare, and characterize interactive VR-based preservice science teacher clinical teaching environments with those of real-life teaching environments. Fifty-four college-aged students were assigned randomly to either real-life conditions or VR conditions. The main effect of the VR condition vers...

In recent years, the applications of virtual reality (VR) in learning environments has received considerable attention. This attention occurs as a part of a wider trend seen since the early millennium. This trend is that of increasing attention being placed on modes of instruction that can supply greater realism and immersion in the science classro...

Dissertation: Developing an Artificial Neural Network to Measure Visual Science Literacy using fNIRS

STEM education has been considered a panacea to cultivate the talents and quality citizens in the 21stcentury all over the world (Bybee, 2013). In China many elementary and secondary schools are also attracted to STEM education. However, just like a thousand Harmlet in the mind of a thousand readers, there are different definitions and values of ST...

Research in aviation and driving has highlighted the importance of training as an effective approach to reduce the costs associated with the supervisory role of the human in automated systems. However, only a few studies have investigated the effect of familiarization tours on highly automated driving. In the present study, a driving simulator expe...

This study investigates the role that textbooks, virtual reality (VR), and mixed approaches (i.e., text and VR) can play in the development of the two writing types, summary and argument writing. This study uses hemodynamics as a proxy for learning. Differences in hemodynamic responses during writing tasks were measured across four different pedago...

Science teachers often work with students in an effort to develop cognitive strategies toward understanding science through various modes of writing. The two modes of writing that have been extensively explored through traditional science education research are argumentative writing, in which the objective is to convince someone of a viewpoint usin...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role textbooks can play on writing complexity and lexical density as a proxy for critical thinking and ultimately learning, in relation to argumentative and summative writing when integrated with a virtual reality experience. In this study, differences in writing complexity and lexical density scores...

In education, persistence and grit are thought to be key behaviors African American and Latinx students need to be successful as they learn. Recent research examining the psychological and physiological cost of persistence and grit indicates historically underrepresented students who are successful because of these behaviors pay a tremendous price...

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/W33QPAEUxhGuMRzqXKb3/full?target=10.1080/15235882.2019.1597774 This nonexperimental study examined academic performance profiles and contributions of language-specific and metacognitive skills to science reading comprehension of Grade 7 students of varied English proficiency. The sample included 204 regular educat...

Many teacher preparation programs include field experiences for preservice science teachers. The purpose of these experiences are to expose those wishing to teach to the complexity of the classrooms in which they will be asked to practice. As the need for experiences has increased, there has been more attention placed on modes of instruction that c...

Students’ declining performance in science and mathematics is an issue of great international concern. Recently, educators and researchers have begun to focus on affective factors such as interest to better understand STEM learning and persistence. Therefore, there is a need for effective measures of STEM interest that allow it to be tracked over t...

The purpose of this paper is to outline the creation of a computational model making use of an underlying processing element in the form of an artificial neural network (ANN). Within the study, the ANN models multiple conservation tasks as inputs from video game play during a high school science content learning game. This model is based upon the i...

This chapter describes the background of learning progressions and project-based learning and their application for learning and instruction for students at age levels that range from the elementary-school level to undergraduate college students in STEM career fields. The use of learning progressions as methods of both assessment and instruction is...

Critical thinking when engaged in science problem solving around even simple tasks such as the Piagetian volume conservation task is a complex endeavor. Tasks such as the conservation task often require the interaction of multiple cognitive systems. Parity judgment, retrieval, and lateral thinking are three examples of such systems interacting with...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects about 1.4% of children in the US. People with ASD have difficulty with social cues, eye contact, communication and engagement with others. The authors reviewed literature from 2010–2018 to fill in the gaps left by previous meta‐analyses and more specifically to examine the fidelity of implementation and the ef...

A common problem in education is getting students to cooperate effectively in groups during learning. Because interdisciplinary research has established that cooperation is sensitive to specific contextual factors such as reciprocity, friendship and benefit, similar factors could be shaping student interactions in contemporary classroom environment...

This research represents an unforeseen outcome of the authors’ National Science Foundation Innovation Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program grant in science education. The grant itself focused on the use of serious educational games (SEGs) in the science classroom, both during and after school, to teach science content an...

Virtual Reality (VR) has potential as a method for engaging in meaningful play therapy. Therapists in a variety of contexts use multiple types of activities to advance sessions with their child patients. Despite the wide availability of electronic games, virtual reality, and children’s near ubiquitous use of these technologies in their free time, t...

Objectives: Accumulating research indicates that engaging in healthy lifestyle behaviors (e.g. exercise, cognitive and social engagement, stress reduction) can prevent illness and disability as people age and improve mental health. The Healthy Aging Activity Engagement (HAAE) scale was developed to holistically assess an individual's level of engag...

The authors investigated the mediating effects of general academic and science-specific vocabulary on science reading comprehension among English learners (ELs) of varied proficiency. The sample included 169 regular education Grade 7 students (86 current ELs; 83 former ELs) enrolled in 1 urban school in Pacific Northwest region of the United States...

Video games with violent content have raised considerable concern in popular media and within academia. Recently, there has been considerable attention regarding the claim of the relationship between aggression and video game play. The authors of this study propose the use of a new class of tools developed via computational models to allow examinat...

Attention on P-20 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has increased tremendously in recent years. Many efforts are underway to promote STEM major and career selection across the nation; specifically, in engineering and computer science. The authors' purpose was to examine an underlying profile combinations of latent t...

Attention on P-20 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has increased tremendously in recent years. Many efforts are underway to promote STEM major and career selection across the nation; specifically, in engineering and computer science. The authors’ purpose was to examine an underlying profile combinations of latent t...

A classroom’s social environment and student dispositions towards social interaction together exert a substantial influence on academic outcomes. The strength of this effect is highlighted by research showing the positive effect of cooperative learning on student achievement, but can also be seen in the contribution that student social dispositions...

Gender based student experience in STEM learning in High School Science (Accepted)

Effectiveness of mathematics and engineering integration in an elementary STEM program

Several theoretical models provide the basis for the interaction of the constructs of external social pressures during rapid attitude formation. Current modes of survey research have difficulty dealing with the complex non-linear dynamic effects such as social pressures on attitudinal formation. The interaction of the resultant constructs within th...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a digitized podcast to deliver read-aloud testing accommodations on mobile devices to students with disabilities and reading difficulties. The total sample for this study included 47 middle school students with reading difficulties. Of the 47 students, 16 were identified as students with disabi...

Poster Presented at Washington State University Academic Showcase. Pullman, WA.

Within the last 10 years, new tools for assisting in the teaching and learning of academic skills and content within the context of science have arisen. These new tools include multiple types of computer software and hardware to include (video) games. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the effect of computer learning games in the...

Using Virtual Field Trips to Expand the Diversity of the Classroom for K-12 Educators - Researcher Perspective

The objective of this meta-analysis was to improve understanding of the heterogeneity in the relationship between cognition and functional status in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Demographic, clinical, and methodological moderators were examined. Cognition explained an average of 23% of the variance in functional outcomes. Execu...

Conflicting explanations and unrelated information in science classrooms increase cognitive load and decrease efficiency in learning. This reduced efficiency ultimately limits one’s ability to solve reasoning problems in the science. In reasoning, it is the ability of students to sift through and identify critical pieces of information that is of p...

Within the mind, there are a myriad of ideas that make sense within the bounds of everyday experience, but are not reflective of how the world actually exists; this is particularly true in the domain of science. Classroom learning with teacher explanation are a bridge through which these naive understandings can be brought in line with scientific r...

Introduction. Creativity is the production of the new, original, unique, and divergent products and ideas mediated through lateral thinking. Evidence suggests that high levels of creativity and fluency are important in the continued development of student interest, efficacy and ultimately career impact in the sciences. Method. In this study, 559 ra...

How do we currently use educational technology? What are possible uses of educational technology and games in the future? The purpose of this book is to provide answers to these questions and raise questions about how educational technology and gaming will be used in the near and far future. During the early millennia, educational technology use ex...

One goal of science educators is to assist secondary school students (9-12) in achieving increased levels of understanding in their learning content areas, specifically the natural sciences. One potential way to improve this understanding is with the use of Serious Educational Games (SEG) as a means to develop underlying computational models and as...

The purpose of this chapter is to explain and provide a conceptual understanding of the application and design of intelligent tutoring systems in education. The authors will examine potential applications of intelligent systems in the classroom. The first example illustrates a means to educate students within science-education teacher-preparation p...

Teacher attrition is a critical issue, as nearly half of beginning teachers leave the teaching field by their fifth year (Ingersoll, 2001; Ingersoll, 2012; Macdonald, 1999). Additional studies have found that secondary teachers, especially in science and mathematics, were more likely to leave the field than elementary teachers (Guarino, Santibanez,...

A critical problem with the examination of learning in education is that there is an underlying assumption that the dynamic systems associated with student information processing can be measured using static linear assessments. This static linear approach does not provide sufficient ability to characterize learning. Much of the modern research with...

Innovation is a term that has become widely used in education; especially as it pertains to technology infusion. Applying the corporate theory of diffusing innovation to educational practice is an innovation in itself. This mixed-methods study examined 38 teachers in a science educational gaming professional development program that provided baseli...

The Instrumental Activities of Daily Living – Compensation (IADL-C) scale was developed to capture early functional difficulties and to quantify compensatory strategy use that may mitigate functional decline in the aging population. The IADL-C was validated in a sample of cognitively healthy older adults (N¼184) and individuals with mild cognitive...

The purpose of this study is to examine online learning simulations within a middle school science class and develop an understanding of the most and least successful profile combination of traits. The sample consisted of 350 middle school student taking 7th and 8th grade science in a classroom setting. Researchers examined outcomes on multiple adm...

The purpose of this paper is to explain and document the creation of a computational model in the form of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) capable of simulating student cognition. Specifically, the model simulates students’ cognition as they complete activities within a science classroom. This study also seeks to examine the effects, as evidenced...

STIMULATE (Science Training Immersive Modules for University Learning Around Teacher Education) is a Serious Educational Game (SEG) designed to advance science teacher preparation and development, by creating a laboratory safety module that immerse teachers in scenarios previously taught using only hypothetical case studies. This study employed a t...

Despite an increased focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in U.S. schools, today's students often struggle to maintain adequate performance in these fields compared with students in other countries (Cheek in Thinking constructively about science, technology, and society education. State University of New York, Albany, 1...

There has been an increase in student achievement testing focusing on content and not underlying student cognition. This is of concern as student cognition provided for a more generalizable analysis of learning. Through a cognitive diagnostic approach, the authors model the propagation of cognitive attributes related to science learning using Serio...

The Self-Efficacy in Technology and Science Short Form is a 16 item consisting of three subscales of (1) Science Process, (2) Computer Use, and (3) Videogame use, which measure aspects of Self-Efficacy.

Early studies of visual attention noted a phenomenon termed ‘inattention blindness’ – the inability of participants to see clear stimuli enter the visual field when attending to something else in that field – and sought to expand the understanding of the phenomenon (, and ). Other research has focused on the changes to the human brain and cognitive...

Teams of some of the most imaginative people develop successful commercial video games. The design processes for successful video games permit critical thinking and innovative thought. The integration of Serious Educational Games (SEG) (Annetta, 2008) into science curriculum was once thought an impossibility, but through several years of work, and...