Students’ conception of set theory through a board game and an active-learning unit

We investigated whether two different learning interventions, Setarea board game and an active-learning unit, can promote the concepts of set theory in secondary students. Setarea was developed to help students learn set theory through the game’s components, mechanics, and missions. The game contained various decks of cards (collections), while its mechanics allowed players to perform different actions on the sets of cards (operations). The game’s missions required students to solve problems both individually and cooperatively. In the active-learning unit, a series of tasks related to set theory were provided. Students also cooperatively completed the provided tasks. The formal definitions and notations were introduced only in the active-learning unit. Seventh graders (have not learned), 9th graders (about to learn), and 11th graders (have learned) were recruited. For each grade, students were separated into two groups, engaging in the different learning interventions. We employed a pre-test–intervention–post-test design. In addition, we examined the students’ flow experiences which included three main dimensions: enjoyment, concentration, and control. A total of 183 Thai secondary students voluntarily participated in this study. The results revealed that both interventions significantly improved the students’ understanding, although no statistically significant differences between the two groups were found. Additionally, for each grade level, the students’ overall flow experiences from the board-game group were higher than those from the active-learning group, indicating that the board game was more immersive than the active-learning unit

Development of a Test to Evaluate Students’ Analytical Thinking Based on Fact versus Opinion Differentiation

Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges of education in Thailand is the development and promotion of the students’ thinking skills. The main purposes of this research were to develop an analytical thinking test for 6th grade students and evaluate the students’ analytical thinking. The sample was composed of 3567 6 th grade students in 2014 academic year at schools in Samuthsakorn province, the largest sample size that has been reached so far for an analytical thinking test in Thailand. The instruments for collecting data were the analytical thinking skill test; Fact vs. Opinion test (F vs. O test) and Ordinary National Educational based test (O-NET based test). The collected data were analysed through TAP 6.65, SIA1.0.1 and SPSS 22 statistical programs. The results revealed statistic consistency between F vs. O test and O-NET based test. In addition, most 6th grade students were in “Unsatisfactory” level for analytical thinking skills. Though improvements are much needed, we believe that the developed Fact vs. Opinion test suits for the promotion and evaluation of the students’ analytical thinking skill

Mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission in macroalgae

Abstract Understanding the infectious diseases outbreak of algae can provide significant knowledge for disease control intervention and/or prevention. We consider here a disease caused by highly pathogenic organisms that can result in the death of algae. Even though a great deal of understanding about diseases of algae has been reached, studies concerning effects of the outbreak at the population level are still rare. For this reason, we computationally model an outbreak in the algae reservoir or container systems consisting of several patches or clusters of algae being infected with a contagious infectious disease. We computationally investigate the systems as well as make some predictions via the deterministic SEIR epidemic model. We consider the factors that could affect the spread of the disease including the number of patches, the size of initial infected population, the distance between patches or spatial range, and the basic reproduction number ( R 0 $R_{0}$ ). The results provide some information that may be beneficial to algae disease control, intervention or prevention