Volkhard Nordmeier

OGAMA (Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer): open-source software designed to analyze eye and mouse movements in slideshow study designs.

In the present article, a new software is introduced that allows the recording and analyzing of eye- and mouse-tracking data from slideshow-based experiments in parallel. The Open Gaze and Mouse Analyzer (OGAMA) is written in C#.NET and has been released as an open-source project. Its main features include slide-show design, the recording of gaze and mouse data, database-driven preprocessing and filtering of gaze and mouse data, the creation of attention maps, areas-of-interest definition, and replay. Eyetracking and/or presentation soft- and hardware recordings in ASCII format can be imported. Data output is provided that can be used directly with different statistical software packages. Because it is open source, one can easily adapt it to suit one’s needs.

Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty

The aim of this study was to improve the criterion-related test score interpretation of a text-based assessment of scientific reasoning competencies in higher education by evaluating factors which systematically affect item difficulty. To provide evidence about the specific demands which test items of various difficulty make on pre-service teachers’ scientific reasoning competencies, we applied a general linear mixed model which allows estimation of the impact of item features on the response observations. The item features had been identified during a standard setting process. Results indicate important predictive potential of one formal item feature (length of response options), two features based on cognitive demands (processing data from tables, processing abstract concepts) and one feature based on solid knowledge (specialist terms). The revealed predictive potential of item features was in accordance with the cognitive demands operationalised in our competence model. Thus, we conclude that the findings support the validity of our interpretation of the test scores as measures of scientific reasoning competencies.

Chaos und Strukturbildung

Die nichtlineare Physik hat sich in wenigen Jahrzehnten zu einem etablierten Forschungsbereich entwickelt. Sie tragt der Tatsache Rechnung, dass die Beschrankung auf lineare Zusammenhange, wie sie fur die klassische Physik aber auch fur die Quantenmechanik typisch ist, zahlreichen Phanomenen und Problemen nicht gerecht wird. Strukturbildung, Komplexitat, Selbstorganisation, Chaos, Fraktale … das sind nur einige Themenbereiche der modernen Naturwissenschaften, die sich nur mit Hilfe der nichtlinearen Physik beschreiben lassen.