Intergrating Programing into Engineering Education through Context-Setting and Scaffolding

我们的世界正在发生变化，使学习成为一种关键技能——一种动词，而不是名词。当我们的工程专业学生进入工作场所时，他们会发现：组织作为一个整体需要学习，能够学习的个人受到高度重视（Senge, 1992），他们的工程知识的半衰期大约是五年（Lohmann &; Stacy, 1990）；他们设计和构建的工件必须能够被用户学习；设计它们是有意义的，这样用户就可以很容易地学习这些工件（Norman, 1993; Soloway, Guzdial, et al., 1994a）。现代认知科学对学习有了新的认识。我们知道，成功的学习者是积极的学习者：他们寻求理解所学知识的深层结构，他们将所学知识整合到之前的知识中，并对所学知识进行索引，以便以后使用（Farnham-Diggory, 1990;kolodner, 1993）。被动学习者依赖于通过讲座和演讲获得的知识并不是成功的学习者——我们不能指望被动学习者能够在没有人为他们打包新知识的情况下从新环境中学习。主动学习者的学习基于两个组成部分：*活动：主动学习者的学生在积极地做事情，并且为了更好地参与其中而学习。使学生成功并从活动中学习的支持被称为脚手架（Palincsar, 1986;Wood, Bruner, et al., 1975）。*情境：学生学习的情境对学生学习的内容以及他们以后如何使用所学知识有重大影响（Farnham-Diggory, 1990）。我的研究和教学计划是为学生在学习型社会的生活做好准备。我的研究重点是定义、实现和评估导致主动学习的方法，特别是使用(1)上下文设置和(2)脚手架技术。我之所以将这些方法应用于工程教育，是因为对能够学习的工程师的迫切需求，以及对乔治亚理工学院（Georgia Tech）愿意探索创新教育方法的工程教育者的随时访问。我的教学计划有两个重点：(1)在我自己和其他人的计算机科学教育中使用这些相同的方法；(2)将这些方法教授给其他人。我在这项研究中提出的具体研究是应用脚手架和情境设置的方法，使编程成为工程教育中的一项活动。我的假设是：编程可以成为工程教育的一种有效和高效的活动，通过(1)重新定义编程活动和(2)基于上下文设置和脚手架技术创建支持这种重新定义的环境来实现。这项工作的成果：*技术背景的经验评估理论-将复杂活动（编程）整合到工程教育的一系列领域所需的设置和脚手架。*创建通用编程环境，为学生提供以面向领域的方式定义和调试过程的机会，从而改善工程教育。*本科、研究生和继续教育阶段的一系列课程，向学生介绍教育技术。这项工作的影响：*工程教育将通过使用学生主动学习的工具而得到改善。*教育技术将有一个理论来指导软件中支持和引导结构的未来发展，以实现主动学习。*基于情境设置和脚手架研究的计算机科学教育的改进。＊＊＊

9550458 Guzdial Our world is changing in ways that make learning a critical skill-a verb, not a noun. When our engineering students enter the workplace, they will find: That organizations as a whole need to learn, and that individuals who can learn are highly valued (Senge, 1992), that the half life of their engineering knowledge is something on the order of five years (Lohmann & Stacy, 1990); and that the artifacts they design and build must lend themselves to being learned by their users; and it makes sense to design them so that users can learn the artifacts easily (Norman, 1993; Soloway, Guzdial, et al., 1994a). Modern cognitive science has cast new light on learning. We know that successful learners are active learners: They seek to understand deep structure in what they learn, they integrate what they learn into what they knew previously, and they index learned knowledge so that it is usable later (Farnham-Diggory, 1990;kolodner, 1993). Passive learners who rely on knowledge being served to them in terms of lectures and presentations are not successful learners-we cannot expect passive learners to be able to learn from new situations without someone there to package the new knowledge for them. Active learners learn based on two components: * Activity: Students who are active learners are actively doing, and are learning in order to better engage in that doing. Support which enables a student to be successful and learn from an activity is called scaffolding (Palincsar, 1986;Wood, Bruner, et al., 1975). * Context: The situation in which students learn has a significant impact on what students learn and how well they may use the learned knowledge later (Farnham-Diggory, 1990). My research and teaching plan are geared to prepare students for life in a learning society. My research is focused on defining, implementing, and evaluating methods that lead to active learning, particularly using (1) context-setting and (2) scaffolding techniques. I apply the se methods in engineering education because of the critical need for engineers who can learn and the ready access to engineering educators who are willing to explore innovative methods in education at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). My teaching plan has two focuses: (1) on using these same methods in my own and other computer science education and (2) on teaching these methods to others. The specific research I propose in this research is to apply the methods of scaffolding and context-setting to enabling the use of programming as an activity in engineering education. My hypothesis is: * Programming can be an effective and efficient activity for engineering education, achievable by (1) redefining the activity of programming and (2) creating environments to support this redefinition based on techniques of context-setting and scaffolding. Products of this work: * An empirically evaluated theory of the technological context- setting and scaffolding needed to integrate a complex activity (programming) into a range of domains in engineering education. * The creation of a general programming environment to improve engineering education by providing students with the opportunities to define and debug processes in a domain-oriented manner. * A set of courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education levels to inform students about educational technology. Impacts of this work: * Engineering education will be improved through use of a tool for students in active learning. * Educational technology will have a theory to guide future development of supportive and guiding structures in software to achieve active learning. * Improvements in computer science education based on the research into context-setting and scaffolding. ***