Lecture

Teaching Problem Solving

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Description

This lecture covers the foundations for teaching problem solving in higher education, focusing on research evidence, problem categorization, student beliefs impact, and transfer in problem solving. It discusses a typology of problems including routine, non-routine, and ill-defined problems. The lecture also explores a cognitive study of problem solving in statics, addressing difficulties faced by students and differences between strong and weak students. It emphasizes the importance of analytical problem-solving skills in engineering education, highlighting the need for strong analysis and problem-solving skills. The session concludes by discussing the concept of learning to transfer knowledge and problem-solving skills between different contexts.

In MOOC

Teaching Science and Engineering

Some people think that teaching is simply a matter of knowing the content material and having the right kind of personality and experience. In fact, research evidence suggests that people can become effective teachers if they learn: the content of their discipline the different ways students learn this content and the problems they face with it how to manage learning in practice in a classroom. This MOOC focuses on the second and third of these elements. The ways in which students learn in science and eng

Official source

Quiz

Related concepts (32)

Problem solving

Problem solving is the process of achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles, a frequent part of most activities. Problems in need of solutions range from simple personal tasks (e.g. how to turn on an appliance) to complex issues in business and technical fields. The former is an example of simple problem solving (SPS) addressing one issue, whereas the latter is complex problem solving (CPS) with multiple interrelated obstacles.

Creative problem-solving

Creative problem-solving (CPS) is the mental process of searching for an original and previously unknown solution to a problem. To qualify, the solution must be novel and reached independently. The creative problem-solving process was originally developed by Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes. Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of using creativity to develop new ideas and solutions to problems. The process is based on separating divergent and convergent thinking styles, so that one can focus one's mind on creating at the first stage, and then evaluating at the second stage.

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science/artificial intelligence, and anthropology. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information.

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviourism, which held from the 1920s to 1950s that unobservable mental processes were outside the realm of empirical science. This break came as researchers in linguistics and cybernetics, as well as applied psychology, used models of mental processing to explain human behavior.

Cognitive load

In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the amount of working memory resources used. However, it is essential to distinguish it from the actual construct of Cognitive Load (CL) or Mental Workload (MWL), which is studied widely in many disciplines. According to work conducted in the field of instructional design and pedagogy, broadly, there are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic cognitive load is the effort associated with a specific topic; extraneous cognitive load refers to the way information or tasks are presented to a learner; and germane cognitive load refers to the work put into creating a permanent store of knowledge (a schema).

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