Collaborative Research: Crossing the Threshold of Problem Solving: Electrical Engineering vs. Chemistry

核心区域：STEM学习/STEM学习环境-本科教育项目描述该项目正在研究两个STEM学科的本科生解决问题的抽象能力。这个为期三年的项目涉及内布拉斯加大学林肯分校电气工程和马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校化学专业的教师和学生。这项研究考察了每个学科的两门课程（通常是在大二和大三），以寻找抽象阈值的证据——学生可以跨越的推理能力的差距。该项目正在寻求利用认知处理模型表征应用于问题解决的推理，表征映射。该研究测试了两个假设：1)许多学生没有完全成熟的抽象过程，即认知供应，并且可以测量他们的过程是什么以及他们能够使用抽象进行推理的程度。2)在每个本科STEM课程的某个地方，认知需求增加到一个典型学生当前抽象能力与所提出问题的复杂性不匹配的程度，这影响了学生的表现。正在研究的研究问题是：RQ1：如何使用表示映射来描述两个不同STEM学科（电气工程和化学）中学生解决问题的过程和抽象程度？RQ2：有什么证据表明在本科电气工程和化学课程中存在抽象阈值？RQ3：在电气工程和化学教育中，抽象的学科特定的细微差别是什么？这个理论驱动的项目涉及严格的跨学科研究，有可能显著提高学生在解决与STEM学科中深层概念相关的问题时的推理理解。这项努力与美国国家学科教育研究学院（DBER）的报告直接一致，该报告将“跨领域概念和认知过程的跨学科研究”作为研究本科STEM教育有前途方向的四项总体建议之一。该项目对如何增加学生解决问题方法的知识库做出了重大贡献，并有助于揭示两个STEM学科中领域通用和学科依赖的认知处理如何相互作用。更广泛的意义从它与DBER报告的强烈一致性中可以看出，该项目是一个国家利益领域。该项目揭示了两个STEM学科中抽象的共性，并澄清了学科之间抽象的差异。这项工作提供了基本的见解，以支持教师如何利用共性，并故意为学生提供在解决问题时实践学科依赖推理策略的途径。将数据收集放在两所非常不同的大学——一所位于中西部的传统研究型大学和一所位于东北部的以少数民族为主的非传统大学——为这些发现提供了更大的潜在相关性，这些发现正在科学和工程教育领域的高知名度会议上广泛传播。跨学科研究产生的结果更容易转移到其他STEM学科，从而增强了它们被广泛采用的潜力。

PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS: University of Massachusetts Boston (Lead)University of Nebraska-LincolnCORE AREA(s):STEM Learning/STEM Learning Environments - Undergraduate EducationPROJECT DESCRIPTION The project is studying the abstraction capacity in problem solving among undergraduate students in two STEM disciplines. The three-year project involves faculty and students in electrical engineering at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in chemistry at University of Massachusetts Boston. The study is examining two courses in each discipline (that typically occur in the sophomore and junior years) for evidence of an abstraction threshold - the gap in reasoning ability that can be crossed by students. The project is seeking to characterize reasoning applied to problem solving using a cognitive processing model, Representation Mapping.The study tests two hypotheses: 1) Many students do not have fully mature processes for abstraction, i.e., cognitive supply, and it is possible to measure what their processes are and the degree to which they are capable of reasoning using abstraction. 2) Somewhere in each undergraduate STEM curriculum, cognitive demand increases to the point where a typical students current capacity for abstraction is not matched to the complexity of problems posed, and this impacts student performance. The research questions being studied are: RQ1: How can students problem solving processes and degree of abstraction in two different STEM disciplines - electrical engineering and chemistry - be characterized using Representation Mapping? RQ2: What evidence is there that abstraction thresholds exist in undergraduate electrical engineering and chemistry curricula? RQ3: What are discipline-specific nuances of abstraction in electrical engineering and chemistry education?This theory-driven project involves a rigorous interdisciplinary study that has the potential to significantly advance the understanding of how students reason when solving problems associated with deep concepts in STEM disciplines. The effort is in direct alignment the report from the National Academies on Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER), which includes "Interdisciplinary studies of cross-cutting concepts and cognitive processes" as one of its four overall recommendations for promising directions in studying undergraduate STEM education. The project is making significant contributions to the knowledge base on how to increase students' problem solving approaches and is helping to uncover how domain-general and discipline-dependent cognitive processing interact in two STEM disciplines.BROADER SIGNIFICANCE As manifest by its strong alignment with the DBER report, the project is an area of national interest. The project is uncovering commonalities of abstraction in two STEM disciplines and clarifying differences in abstraction between the disciplines. This effort is providing fundamental insights to support how instructors can capitalize on commonalities and deliberately provide avenues for students to practice discipline-dependent reasoning strategies in problem solving. Situating the data collection in two very different universities - a traditional research university in the Midwest and a majority minority non-traditional university in the Northeast - lends greater potential relevance to the findings, which is being widely disseminated at high profile conferences in both science and engineering education. An interdisciplinary study is producing results that are more readily transferred to other STEM disciplines, thus enhancing their potential for broad adoption.