Transforming Text to Diagram: Investigating and Helping Students Develop Key Cognitive Strategies for Solving Engineering Pproblems

将文本转化为图表：研究并帮助学生制定解决工程问题的关键认知策略

• 批准号: 1109309
• 负责人: Joseph Le Doux
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-06-01 至 2014-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1109309&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transforming; Text; Diagram; Investigating; Helping

This exploratory project investigates a complex problem of why many engineering students have difficulty mastering the problem solving approaches regularly conducted by expert engineers. The study will particularly focus on the transformation of a textual or linguistic account of a problem into a diagrammatic or schematic representation one. This transformation seems particular problematic when solving problems addressing conservation of mass and energy balance. The investigators will explore differences between novice and expert engineers by videotaping problem solving sessions with the two populations followed by retrospective questioning with the subjects viewing the videos. Then they will code and classify the steps taken by the experts to solve the problem and compare these with those of learners. Generalizations will be made about what practices appear to be particularly useful for instruction. In later steps, the team will design classroom interventions and conduct a comparative study of a control group (no intervention) and an experimental group (the intervention will be based on phase I findings). This project is intended to determine whether further exploration of this complex problem is worthy of future study. Eventually study results of expert development would be used to improve the teaching of engineering problem-solving approaches for introductory engineering students. The investigators do not begin the observations with a clear hypothesis of stages but their observational research methods will result in improved hypothetical explanations for the process of becoming an expert in complex engineering topics through the use of diagrams and verbal explanations. The in depth exploration of a small number of cases will enable the two researchers to modify their expectations, develop intervention strategies, and try out some of their observations at a reasonable expense.

这个探索性的项目调查了一个复杂的问题，为什么许多工程专业的学生难以掌握专家工程师经常指导的解决问题的方法。这项研究将特别侧重于将问题的文本或语言描述转换为图解或图式表示。在解决质量守恒和能量平衡的问题时，这种转换似乎特别成问题。研究人员将通过对新手和专业工程师解决问题的过程进行录像，然后对观看视频的受试者进行追溯性提问，来探索新手工程师和专业工程师之间的差异。然后，他们将对专家为解决问题所采取的步骤进行编码和分类，并将这些步骤与学习者的步骤进行比较。将对哪些做法进行概括，说明哪些做法对教学特别有用。在后面的步骤中，研究小组将设计课堂干预措施，并对控制组(不干预)和实验组(干预将基于第一阶段的研究结果)进行比较研究。这一项目旨在确定是否值得进一步探索这一复杂问题。最终，专家发展的研究成果将被用于改进工程专业入门学生的工程问题解决方法的教学。研究人员不会以明确的阶段假设开始观察，但他们的观察研究方法将通过使用图表和口头解释来改进对成为复杂工程主题专家的过程的假设解释。对少数案例的深入探索将使两位研究人员能够修改他们的预期，制定干预策略，并以合理的费用尝试他们的一些观察结果。