Is Early Warning Effective for the Improvement of Problem Solving and Project Performance?

Since the first launch of the new engineering contract (NEC) in 1993, early warning of problems has been widely recognized as an important approach of proactive management during a construction or engineering project. Is early warning really effective for the improvement of problem solving and project performance? This is a research question that still lacks a good answer. For this reason, an empirical investigation was made in the United Kingdom (U.K.) to answer the question. This study adopts a combination of literature review, expert interview, and questionnaire survey. Nearly 100 questionnaire responses were collected from the U.K. construction industry, based on which the use of early warning under different forms of contract is compared in this paper. Problem solving and project performance are further compared between the projects using early warning and the projects not using early warning. The comparison provides clear evidence for the significant effect of early warning on problem solving and project performance in terms of time, cost, and quality. Subsequently, an input-process-output model is developed in this paper to explore the relationship among early warning, problem solving, and project
performance. All these help construction researchers and practitioners to better understand the role of early warning in ensuring project success.

The Effect of Proximity, Explicitness, and Representation of Basic Science Information on Student Clinical Problem-Solving

Problem: Medical and veterinary students memorize facts but then have difficulty applying those facts in clinical problem solving. Cognitive engineering research suggests that the inability of medical and veterinary students to infer concepts from facts may be due in part to specific features of how information is represented and organized in educational materials. First, physical separation of pieces of information may increase the cognitive load on the student. Second, information that is necessary but not explicitly stated may also contribute to the student’s cognitive load. Finally, the types of representations – textual or graphical – may also support or hinder the student’s learning process. This may explain why students have difficulty applying biomedical facts in clinical problem solving. Purpose: To test the hypothesis that three specific aspects of expository text – the patial distance between the facts needed to infer a rule, the explicitness of information, and the format of representation – affected the ability of students to solve clinical problems. Setting: The study was conducted in the parasitology laboratory of a college of veterinary medicine in Texas. Sample: The study subjects were a convenience sample consisting of 132 second-year veterinary students who matriculated in 2007. The age of this class upon admission ranged from 20-52, and the gender makeup of this class consisted of approximately 75% females and 25% males. Results: No statistically significant difference in student ability to solve clinical problems was found when relevant facts were placed in proximity, nor when an explicit rule was stated. Further, no statistically significant difference in student ability to solve clinical problems was found when students were given different representations of material, including tables and concept maps. Findings: The findings from this study indicate that the three properties investigated – proximity, explicitness, and representation – had no statistically significant effect on student learning as it relates to clinical problem-solving ability. However, ad hoc observations as well as findings from other researchers suggest that the subjects were probably using rote learning techniques such as memorization, and therefore were not attempting to infer relationships from the factual material in the interventions, unless they were specifically prompted to look for patterns. A serendipitous finding unrelated to the study hypothesis was that those subjects who correctly answered questions regarding functional (non-morphologic) properties, such as mode of transmission and intermediate host, at the family taxonomic level were significantly more likely to correctly answer clinical case scenarios than were subjects who did not correctly answer questions regarding functional properties. These findings suggest a strong relationship (p < .001) between well-organized knowledge of taxonomic functional properties and clinical problem solving ability. Recommendations: Further study should be undertaken investigating the relationship between knowledge of functional taxonomic properties and clinical problem solving ability. In addition, the effect of prompting students to look for patterns in instructional material, followed by the effect of factors that affect cognitive load such as proximity, explicitness, and representation, should be explored.

A Language to Formalize and to Operationalize Problem-solving Strategies of Structured Knowledge Models

This paper describes a proposal of a language called Link which has been designed to formalize and operationalize problem solving strategies. This language is used within a software environment called KSM (Knowledge Structure Manager) which helps developers in formulating and operationalizing structured knowledge models. The paper presents both its syntax and dynamics, and gives examples of well-known problem-solving strategies of reasoning formulated using this language.

Development of a method of assessment of the problem-solving competency at the Technical University of Madrid

The competence evaluation promoted by the European High Education Area entails a very important methodological change that requires guiding support to help lecturers carry out this new and complex task. In this regard, the Technical University of Madrid (UPM, by its Spanish acronym) has financed a series of coordinated projects with the objective of developing a model for teaching and evaluating core competences and providing support to lecturers. This paper deals with the problem solving competence. The first step has been to elaborate a guide for teachers to provide an homogeneous way to asses this competence. This guide considers several levels of acquisition of the competence and provided the rubrics to be applied for each one. The guide has been subsequently validated with several pilot experiences. In this paper we will explain the problem-solving assessment guide for teachers and will show the pilot experiences that has been carried out. We will finally justify the validity of the method to assess the problem solving competence.

Evaluation of creative problem solving abilities in undergraduate structural engineers through interdisciplinary problem based learning

For a structural engineer, effective communication and interaction with architects cannot be underestimated as a key skill to success throughout their professional career. Structural engineers and architects have to share a common language and understanding of each other in order to achieve the most desirable architectural and structural designs. This interaction and engagement develops during their professional career but needs to be nurtured during their undergraduate studies. The objective of this paper is to present the strategies employed to engage higher order thinking in structural engineering students in order to help them solve complex problem-based learning (PBL) design scenarios presented by architecture students. The strategies employed were applied in the experimental setting of an undergraduate module in structural engineering at Queen’s University Belfast in the UK. The strategies employed were active learning to engage with content knowledge, the use of physical conceptual structural models to reinforce key concepts and finally, reinforcing the need for hand sketching of ideas to promote higher order problem-solving. The strategies employed were evaluated through student survey, student feedback and module facilitator (this author) reflection. The strategies were qualitatively perceived by the tutor and quantitatively evaluated by students in a cross-sectional study to help interaction with the architecture students, aid interdisciplinary learning and help students creatively solve problems (through higher order thinking). The students clearly enjoyed this module and in particular interacting with structural engineering tutors and students from another discipline

Group metacognition during mathematical problem solving

Although various studies have shown that groups are more productive than individuals in complex mathematical problem solving, not all groups work together cooperatively. This review highlights that addressing organisational and cognitive factors to help scaffold group mathematical problem solving is necessary but not sufficient. Successful group problem solving also needs to incorporate metacognitive factors in order for groups to reflect on the organisational and cognitive factors influencing their group mathematical problem solving.

Future directions and perspectives for problem solving research and curriculum development

Since the 1960s, numerous studies on problem solving have revealed the complexity of the domain and the difficulty in translating research findings into practice. The literature suggests that the impact of problem solving research on the mathematics curriculum has been limited. Furthermore, our accumulation of knowledge on the teaching of problem solving is lagging. In this first discussion paper we initially present a sketch of 50 years of research on mathematical problem solving. We then consider some factors that have held back problem solving research over the past decades and offer some directions for how we might advance the field. We stress the urgent need to take into account the nature of problem solving in various arenas of today’s world and to accordingly modernize our perspectives on the teaching and learning of problem solving and of mathematical content through problem solving. Substantive theory development is also long overdue—we show how new perspectives on the development of problem solving expertise can contribute to theory development in guiding the design of worthwhile learning activities. In particular, we explore a models and modeling perspective as an alternative to existing views on problem solving.

Methodologies for investigating relationships between concept development and the development of problem solving abilities

This paper is the second in a pair that Lesh, English, and Fennewald will be presenting at ICME TSG 19 on Problem Solving in Mathematics Education. The first paper describes three shortcomings of past research on mathematical problem solving. The first shortcoming can be seen in the fact that knowledge has not accumulated – in fact it has atrophied significantly during the past decade. Unsuccessful theories continue to be recycled and embellished. One reason for this is that researchers generally have failed to develop research tools needed to reliably observe, document, and assess the development of concepts and abilities that they claim to be important. The second shortcoming is that existing theories and research have failed to make it clear how concept development (or the development of basic skills) is related to the development of problem solving abilities – especially when attention is shifted beyond word problems found in school to the kind of problems found outside of school, where the requisite skills and even the questions to be asked might not be known in advance. The third shortcoming has to do with inherent weaknesses in observational studies and teaching experiments – and the assumption that a single grand theory should be able to describe all of the conceptual systems, instructional systems, and assessment systems that strongly molded and shaped by the same theoretical perspectives that are being used to develop them. Therefore, this paper will describe theoretical perspectives and methodological tools that are proving to be effective to combat the preceding kinds or shortcomings. We refer to our theoretical framework as models & modeling perspectives (MMP) on problem solving (Lesh & Doerr, 2003), learning, and teaching. One of the main methodologies of MMP is called multi-tier design studies (MTD).

Problem solving for the 21st century

Mathematical problem solving has been the subject of substantial and often controversial research for several decades. We use the term, problem solving, here in a broad sense to cover a range of activities that challenge and extend one’s thinking. In this chapter, we initially present a sketch of past decades of research on mathematical problem solving and its impact on the mathematics curriculum. We then consider some of the factors that have limited previous research on problem solving. In the remainder of the chapter we address some ways in which we might advance the fields of problem-solving research and curriculum development.

A problem-posing intervention in the development of problem-solving competence of underachieving, middle-year students

This study reported on the issues surrounding the acquisition of problem-solving competence of middle-year students who had been ascertained as above average in intelligence, but underachieving in problem-solving competence. In particular, it looked at the possible links between problem-posing skills development and improvements in problem-solving competence. A cohort of Year 7 students at a private, non-denominational, co-educational school was chosen as participants for the study, as they undertook a series of problem-posing sessions each week throughout a school term. The lessons were facilitated by the researcher in the students’ school setting. Two criteria were chosen to identify participants for this study. Firstly, each participant scored above the 60th percentile in the standardized Middle Years Ability Test (MYAT) (Australian Council for Educational Research, 2005) and secondly, the participants all scored below the cohort average for Criterion B (Problem-solving Criterion) in their school mathematics tests during the first semester of Year 7. Two mutually exclusive groups of participants were investigated with one constituting the Comparison Group and the other constituting the Intervention Group. The Comparison Group was chosen from a Year 7 cohort for whom no problem-posing intervention had occurred, while the Intervention Group was chosen from the Year 7 cohort of the following year. This second group received the problem-posing intervention in the form of a teaching experiment. That is, the Comparison Group were only pre-tested and post-tested, while the Intervention Group was involved in the teaching experiment and received the pre-testing and post-testing at the same time of the year, but in the following year, when the Comparison Group have moved on to the secondary part of the school. The groups were chosen from consecutive Year 7 cohorts to avoid cross-contamination of the data. A constructionist framework was adopted for this study that allowed the researcher to gain an “authentic understanding” of the changes that occurred in the development of problem-solving competence of the participants in the context of a classroom setting (Richardson, 1999). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through a combination of methods including researcher observation and journal writing, video taping, student workbooks, informal student interviews, student surveys, and pre-testing and post-testing. This combination of methods was required to increase the validity of the study’s findings through triangulation of the data. The study findings showed that participation in problem-posing activities can facilitate the re-engagement of disengaged, middle-year mathematics students. In addition, participation in these activities can result in improved problem-solving competence and associated developmental learning changes. Some of the changes that were evident as a result of this study included improvements in self-regulation, increased integration of prior knowledge with new knowledge and increased and contextualised socialisation.

Interdisciplinarity vs disciplinarity : developing knowledge for problem solving in middle years of schooling

Interdisciplinary studies are fundamental to the signature practices for the middle years of schooling. Middle years researchers claim that interdisciplinarity in teaching appropriately meets the needs of early adolescents by tying concepts together, providing frameworks for the relevance of knowledge, and demonstrating the linking of disparate information for solution of novel problems. Cognitive research is not wholeheartedly supportive of this position. Learning theorists assert that application of knowledge in novel situations for the solution of problems is actually dependent on deep discipline based understandings. The present research contrasts the capabilities of early adolescent students from discipline based and interdisciplinary based curriculum schooling contexts to successfully solve multifaceted real world problems. This will inform the development of effective management of middle years of schooling curriculum.