Enhancing opportunities to feed forward ; developing problem solving skills using web based scenarios

Universities often struggle to satisfy students’ need for feedback. This is an area where student satisfaction with courses of study can be low. Yet it is clear that one of the properties of good teaching is giving the highest quality feedback on student work. The term ‘feedback’ though is most commonly associated with summative assessment given by a teacher after work is completed. The student can often be a passive participant in the process. This paper looks at the implementation of a web based interactive scenario completed by students prior to summative assessment. It requires students to participate actively to develop and improve their legal problem solving skills. Traditional delivery of legal education focuses on print and an instructor who conveys the meaning of the written word to students. Today, mixed modes of teaching are often preferred and they can provide enhanced opportunities for feeding forward with greater emphasis on what students do. Web based activities allow for flexible delivery; they are accessible off campus, at a time that suits the student and may be completed by students at their own pace. This paper reports on an online interactive activity which provides valuable formative feedback necessary to allow for successful completion of a final problem solving assignment. It focuses on how the online activity feeds forward and contributes to the development of legal problem solving skills. Introduction to Law is a unit designed and introduced for completion by undergraduate students from faculties other than law but is focused most particularly on students enrolled in the Bachelor of Entertainment Industries degree, a joint initiative of the faculties of Creative Industries, Business and Law at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. The final (and major) assessment for the unit is an assignment requiring students to explain the legal consequences of particular scenarios. A number of cost effective web based interactive scenarios have been developed to support the unit’s classroom activities. The tool commences with instruction on problem solving method. Students then view the stimulus which is a narrative produced in the form of a music video clip. A series of questions are posed which guide students through the process and they can compare their responses with sample answers provided. The activity clarifies the problem solving method and expectations for the summative assessment and allows students to practise the skill. The paper reports on the approach to teaching and learning taken in the unit including the design process and implementation of the activity. It includes an evaluation of the activity with respect to its effectiveness as a tool to feed forward and reflects on the implications for the teaching of law in higher education.

"Ruby's Music Festival" : developing problem solving skills using online scenarios and creating opportunities to feed forward

One of the characteristics of good teaching is giving the highest quality feedback on student work but the term “feedback” is most commonly associated with summative assessment given by a teacher after work is completed. The student can often be a passive participant in the process. This article looks at the implementation of web based scenarios completed by students prior to summative assessment with the objective of improving legal problem solving skills. It examines the design process and the implementation of the problem solving activity and the approach to teaching and learning taken in the new law unit of which it is part. We argue that such activities are effective tools to feed forward and reflect on the implications for the effective teaching of law in higher education.

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.

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

Losing their marbles : syntax-free programming for assessing problem-solving skills

Novice programmers have difficulty developing an algorithmic solution while simultaneously obeying the syntactic constraints of the target programming language. To see how students fare in algorithmic problem solving when not burdened by syntax, we conducted an experiment in which a large class of beginning programmers were required to write a solution to a computational problem in structured English, as if instructing a child, without reference to program code at all. The students produced an unexpectedly wide range of correct, and attempted, solutions, some of which had not occurred to their teachers. We also found that many common programming errors were evident in the natural language algorithms, including failure to ensure loop termination, hardwiring of solutions, failure to properly initialise the computation, and use of unnecessary temporary variables, suggesting that these mistakes are caused by inexperience at thinking algorithmically, rather than difficulties in expressing solutions as program code.

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 in a middle school robotics design classroom

Little research has been conducted on how students work when they are required to plan, build and evaluate artefacts in technology rich learning environments such as those supported by tools including flow charts, Labview programming and Lego construction. In this study, activity theory was used as an analytic tool to examine the social construction of meaning. There was a focus on the effect of teachers’ goals and the rules they enacted upon student use of the flow chart planning tool, and the tools of the programming language Labview and Lego construction. It was found that the articulation of a teacher’s goals via rules and divisions of labour helped to form distinct communities of learning and influenced the development of different problem solving strategies. The use of the planning tool flow charting was associated with continuity of approach, integration of problem solutions including appreciation of the nexus between construction and programming, and greater educational transformation. Students who flow charted defined problems in a more holistic way and demonstrated more methodical, insightful and integrated approaches to their use of tools. The findings have implications for teaching in design dominated learning environments.

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.