Exploring the Role of Computational Adaptive Expertise in Design and Innovation

该工程教育项目的目标是促进对如何培养工程毕业生有效和高效地为美国在技术创新方面的领导地位做出贡献的基础和应用理解。pi建议在工程教育文献中最近出现的一个概念框架的背景下研究计算和分析能力在创新中的作用：适应性专业知识。适应性专业知识是一个新兴的学习研究领域，它在提高对知识转移问题的理解方面显示出了希望。这是一个关键的研究领域，通过提高对培养创新和高效问题解决者的理解，直接关系到美国的全球竞争力，这些问题解决者可以超越狭窄的学科领域。pi计划进行基础研究，目的是为教与学的实践提供信息。他们假设，适应性专业知识的一般模型可以专门用于描述CADEX开发背景下的效率和创新属性。因此，他们计划将重点放在基础研究上，以了解CADEX的本质，并根据每个轴的潜在认知或情感属性来定义效率和创新轴。这种方法使他们能够揭示如何更广泛地理解创新和效率，同时使我们能够在CADEX的背景下具体定义术语。基础研究和应用研究相结合的优势在于，pi不仅确定了计算适应性专业知识和潜在有效教学策略的认知方面，而且还将在实际教育环境中验证和测试他们的发现。该研究将为发展技术创新所需能力的教学和评估策略提供建议，从而造福社会。这些都是当今竞争激烈的经济中的基本技能，因此将通过培养具有开发高效和有效设计解决方案的认知策略的毕业生来增强美国的工业竞争力。

TThe objective of this engineering education project is to advance both basic and applied understanding of how to prepare engineering graduates to effectively and efficiently contribute to America's leadership in technological innovation. The PIs propose to study the role that computational and analytical abilities play in innovation in the context of a conceptual framework that has recently emerged in the engineering education literature: adaptive expertise.Adaptive expertise is an emerging area of research on learning that has shown promise in providing enhanced understanding of transfer of knowledge issues. It is a critical area of research that directly relates to U.S. global competitiveness through improving understanding of what is required to train innovative and efficient problem solvers who can transcend narrow disciplinary fields. The PIs plan to perform fundamental research with the intent to inform the practice of teaching and learning. They hypothesize that the general model of adaptive expertise can be applied specifically to characterize the attributes of efficiency and innovation in the context of developing CADEX. Therefore, they plan to focus on basic research to understand the nature of CADEX and to define the efficiency and innovation axes in terms of the underlying cognitive or affective attributes of each. This approach allows them to uncover how innovation and efficiency may be conceived more broadly, while at the same time enables us to define terms specifically in the context of CADEX. The advantage of combining fundamental and applied research is that the PIs not only identify cognitive aspects of computational adaptive expertise and potentially effective instructional strategies, they will also verify and test their findings in actual educational settings.The research will benefit society by providing recommendations for instructional and assessment strategies to develop competencies required for technological innovation. These are essential skills in today's competitive economy and thus will enhance the United States' industrial competitiveness by producing graduates poised with cognitive strategies for developing efficient and effective design solutions.