فصلنامه فناوری آموزش
سال پنجم شماره 3 (پیاپی 19، تابستان 1390)

 Theoretical trainings, especially in the fields of art & architecture in graduate programs, have lead to basic theories of experts in different branches of these disciplines that are often instructed in a linear and unidirectional knowledge order in the classrooms. The qualitative approach which was introduced for the first time as a research in Iran university of Science & Technology (IUST) based on one of the qualitative research methods in environmental perception called Phenomenology. The fundamental goal of this method is to understand the lived-experience which is regarded here as a direct & lived interaction of students with the built environment. Therefore, an issue discussed from the syllabus of the review of reflections’ classroom, with the central idea of architectural formation, was the position of the sense of place and its architectural understanding. Thus, the students lived in the place, experience it and communicated with it by their placement somewhere that they have not already experienced it in a way different from the mere study. The result which ultimately obtained from this experience was the understanding of the sense of place, which is going back to the relation between user and architecture, by graduate architecture students which have previously thought of themselves as they are in the position of a rational analyzer.

Mathematical creativity is often considered as a mysterious phenomenon. Most mathematicians seem to be not interested in analyzing their own thinking processes and do not describe how they work or conceive their theories. One of the goals of this paper, which is based on research findings from contemporary literature, presents some definitions and characteristics of mathematical creativity and also describes and analyzes mathematicians’ thinking processes during creating mathematics. For this purpose, a four-stage model is considered consisting of: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. Referring to literature, it is evident that there is not a specific conventional definition of mathematical creativity. According to some of definitions, a creative act in mathematics could consist of: creating a new fruitful mathematical concept; discovering an unknown relation; and reorganizing the structure of a mathematical theory. The challenges in the identification and development of mathematical creativity are due to the large variety in definitions and characteristics of mathematical creativity. Understanding, intuition, insight and generalization are some of moving powers of mathematical creativity. Fallibility is one of the characteristics of creative mathematical activities which should be appreciated since this existing chance of fallibility could lead to major success achievements of human. Hence, considering all above mentioned, learning-teaching mathematics should be so that it provides environment that fosters ability to make connections among concepts and processes and also provides opportunities to generalize.

To investigate the impact of technology on the mathematics learning, female students of two mathematics classes who studying at pre-university level in Torkamanchay, were selected as experimental and control group. Graph subject was taught to the experimental group by NEWGRAPH software (a kind of dynamic interactive software), and to the control group without it. At first a pre-test and after the teaching period, a post-test was given to both groups. Statistical analysis revealed the experimental group’s marks is better than the control group’s marks. This research is also about answering to questions, in teaching by technology, whether the total of teaching should be done by using technology, or must integrate with other teaching methods?, which patterns for teaching without technology could be deducted from this research?

The purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of using analogies as a teaching methodology in the learning of complicated concepts for high school courses of electrical circuits. For this purpose, using random clustering method of sampling, a population of 44 people was selected from the third year students of martyr Rajaie high school of Azarshahr city and then was divided into two classes which were called "experimental group" and "control group". In order to examine the effect of using analogies in the educational progress of students a pretest-post test randomized group design was used. The selected groups were examined using pretest. Students in "experimental group" were taught using analogical pattern in 8 sessions with 90 minutes duration. But students in "control group" were taught using conventional methods. In posttest stage, learning rates of students in the both groups were measured using verified test. Results showed that below the 0.05 level, there was not a significant difference between averages of educational progress grades of the both "experimental group" and "control group". This difference was more considerable in high levels of Blooms taxonomy below the 0.05 level. Therefore it can be concluded that using analogies have brought about educational progress for students especially in complicated levels of learning.

The present study investigated the causes of loss and motivational factors among pre university students before they had their own points of view. Subjects studied in 1455 pre-university students (766 girls and 683 boys) was the center from 8 randomly selected were studied to Measure the attitude of students about a drop in academic motivation scale, 40 species based on spectrum Likert motivational factors that were taken in four categories of family, school environment, social environment and individual measures were. Scale reliability and validity of the mentioned study was evaluated and approved. Findings showed that the girls, in the family and individual factors, have higher level of motivation than boys do. With motivational factors and educational levels of their fathers have shown that fathers of the children who have high school education in the family factor of the motivation are higher than the children of the fathers who were illiterate and with this factor ,maternal education levels have shown that the school factor of the children whose mothers have had high school education, had more motivation than the offspring of the mothers who were illiterate or had primary education Also, the children whose mothers were housewives and they have more academic motivation in the social factor, compared to the children of the working mothers do. While   from the aspect of family and individual dimensions there was no significant difference in total but four academic motivating factors there were no significantly in favor of children whose mothers were housewives, respectively.

One of the most widely used information presentation software is PowerPoint. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of PowerPoint slides on the learners’ cognitive and affective outputs. Affective indicators have included the student opinions about the effects of these methods on improving note-taking, improving understanding and improving Teaching - learning process. Retention, understanding and application of the learned material were considered as well as cognitive indicators. An educational psychology achievement test was used to measure the cognitive outputs and an attitude scale was used to measure the affective outputs. Research design used in this study is a semi-experimental with pretest and posttest by compared groups. The study subjects were 73 students of teacher training Azerbaijan University who were chosen by available sampling method. Results indicated that the use of PowerPoint software hasn’t a significant impact on the cognitive parameters but that has a significant effect on the students’ opinions about improving note taking. This inefficiency due content centered and linearity nature of PowerPoint software. Using concept map software that in which the structure of knowledge is emphasized was introduced as an alternative approach.

The present study attempted to investigate the information literacy of students at Mohaghegh Ardabili University. The original pool for the study included 400 male and female students (freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior). The selection was made based on multi-stage sampling in 2010. The study is a survey and the data have been collected based on 22 indices falling under five standards observed in "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education" (ACRL, 2000) and a questionnaire constructed by the researcher. The findings demonstrated that the information of students stood above the average in terms of the five standards mentioned. The results obtained from a MANOVA test run showed a statistically significant difference between males and females regarding the variable in focus. The difference appeared to be statistically different among freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The difference, however, did not reach statistical difference among the students of Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Technology, and Engineering.