CCLI: Improving Circuit Analysis Instruction with a Completion Problem Paradigm

工程-电气（55）该项目正在探索使用认知负荷理论的概念来开发教育材料和教学策略，重点是提供适合学生先前知识的问题，以便材料更有可能存储在长期记忆中，以供将来使用。 结果表明，工作记忆超载导致学生能够解决他们正在研究的问题，但他们不会将材料储存在长期记忆中供以后使用。 这种超负荷的一部分来自材料本身;另一部分来自教学设计，这些设计导致了更多的脑力劳动，而没有图式的获得和构建。 为了提供这种方法的概念验证，正在为电路分析课程开发材料。这一教学改革的目标是提高学生解决复杂、不明确问题的能力。该计划正在开发三套不同的材料：使用专家社区的电路问题的评级量表，一套指导学生形成适当的长期记忆存储模式的完成问题，以及一套衡量学生在新情况下应用课程材料的能力的高级问题。在外部评估员的帮助下进行的评估工作，通过用标准题目给学生的作业打分来衡量学生解决标准问题和新问题的能力的变化。 项目材料和成果正在通过在工程教育网点的介绍和出版物以及通过在教员网站和特别兴趣网站（莱斯大学的联系和特拉华州大学的基于问题的学习交流中心）上张贴材料来传播。 更广泛的影响包括材料的传播以及将这种方法适用于其他工程和科学课程的可能性。

Engineering - Electrical (55)The project is exploring the use of concepts from cognitive load theory to develop educational materials and teaching strategies that focus on providing problems appropriate to a student's prior knowledge so that the material is more likely stored in long-term memory for use in future situations. Results show that an overloaded working memory leads to students who can solve the problems they are working on, but who do not store the material in long-term memory for use later. Part of this overload comes from the material itself; the other part comes from instruction designs that lead to increased mental effort and no schema acquisition and construction. To provide a proof-of-concept for this approach, materials are being developed for a course in electric circuit analysis. The goal of this instructional change is to improve a student's ability to solve complex, ill-defined problems. This program is developing three different set of materials: a rating scale for electric circuit problems using a community of experts, a set of completion problems which guide students in forming appropriate schema for long term memory storage, and a set of advanced problems which measure a student's ability to apply course material in novel situations. Evaluation efforts, conducted with the help of an outside evaluator, are measuring changes in students' ability to solve both standard and novel problems by scoring student work with standard rubrics. Project materials and results are being disseminated through presentation and publication in the engineering education outlets and by posting material on the instructor's website and on special interest websites (Connections at Rice University and Problem-Based Learning Clearinghouse at University of Delaware). The broader impacts include the dissemination of the material and the potential for adapting this approach to other engineering and science course.