CCLI: Improving Circuit Analysis Instruction with a Completion Problem Paradigm

工程-电气（55）该项目探索认知负荷理论概念的应用，以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，以便更有可能将材料储存在长期记忆中，以备将来使用。结果表明，超负荷的工作记忆导致学生能够解决他们正在做的问题，但他们不能将材料储存在长期记忆中供以后使用。这种超负荷部分来自材料本身；另一部分来自于导致脑力劳动增加而没有图式获取和构建的指令设计。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。这种教学变化的目标是提高学生解决复杂、不明确问题的能力。该项目正在开发三套不同的材料：一套由专家组成的电路问题评分量表，一套指导学生形成适当的长期记忆存储模式的完成性问题，以及一套衡量学生在新情况下应用课程材料能力的高级问题。评估工作是在外部评估人员的帮助下进行的，通过对学生的作业进行标准评分，来衡量学生解决标准问题和新问题的能力的变化。项目材料和结果通过在工程教育渠道的展示和出版，以及在讲师网站和特殊兴趣网站（莱斯大学的联系和特拉华大学的基于问题的学习信息中心）上发布材料来传播。更广泛的影响包括材料的传播以及将这种方法应用于其他工程和科学课程的潜力。

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.