Designing Case Studies to Teach Complex Problem Solving: Capitalizing on Advanced Technologies

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The goal of this project is to teach students in introductory programming classes to solve complex programming problems in an important domain--social science. Complexity in these problems will be dealt with by designing and evaluating case studies that address valid programming problems from social science. How programmers store and reuse knowledge will be communicated by creating a "library" of programming knowledge in hypermedia. The case studies will illustrate how programmers combine principles from the knowledge domain of social science and constraints of the programming environment and describe how the library of this knowledge can be used to design solutions to complex problems. To accomplish these goals and take full advantage of the technologies of the of the 1990s, specially we plan to (a) examine how experts attain and use knowledge of programming to solve complex problems in social science, (b) use hypermedia to create a library of model problem solutions accessible to students, (c) use principles from apprenticeship learning to devise case studies usable in real settings that teach students skills to use the library to design solutions to complex social science problems, (d) teach students to solve complex social science problems using a non-procedural language well-suited to the problem demands, and (e) meet the needs of students underrepresented in programming classes including women.