Exploring the Role of Computational Adaptive Expertise in Design and Innovation

这一工程教育项目的目标是增进对如何培养工程专业毕业生以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本和应用方面的理解。PIs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所起的作用：适应性专业知识是关于学习的一个新兴研究领域，在提供对知识转移问题的更好理解方面显示出希望。这是一个关键的研究领域，通过提高对培养能够超越狭窄学科领域的创新和高效问题解决者所需条件的理解，直接关系到美国的全球竞争力。私人投资机构计划进行基础研究，目的是为教学实践提供信息。他们假设，适应性专门知识的一般模式可以具体应用于在开发Cadex的背景下表征效率和创新的属性。因此，他们计划将重点放在基础研究上，以了解Cadex的性质，并根据各自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发现如何在更广泛的范围内构思创新和效率，同时使我们能够专门在Cadex的背景下定义术语。将基础研究和应用研究结合起来的好处是，个人投资项目不仅识别计算适应专业知识和潜在有效的教学策略的认知方面，还将在实际的教育环境中验证和测试他们的发现。这项研究将为发展技术创新所需的能力的教学和评估策略提供建议，从而使社会受益。这些是当今竞争激烈的经济中的基本技能，因此将通过培养出具备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.