Integrating and Evaluating the Modeling Applied to Problem Solving Pedagogy

描述（由申请人提供）：此应用程序解决广泛的挑战领域（12）科学，技术，工程和数学教育（STEM）和特定的挑战主题12-OD-104：创新方法STEM教育。STEM课程的中心任务之一是教授解决问题的技能。这一目标是大学物理入门课程通常是化学，生物，医学预科和其他健康科学专业的主要原因之一。不幸的是，研究文献表明，<$大多数学生在入门物理课程使用新手技术来解决问题[5，17]<$<$即使是改革后的入门大学物理教科书中，超过90%的问题都允许新手解决问题的方法，而不是鼓励专家解决问题的方法[19]大多数入门课程降低了学生的一般专业知识和他们对自己解决问题能力的信心[7，8]。认知心理学家在80年代早期表明，专家解决问题的方式与初学者（新手）有质的不同[5]。已经开发了几种教学方法来教授专家特征[9，10，20-23]，其中最好的是建模教学。建模教学于1995年引入，2005年有6%的高中物理教师使用建模教学，自2005年以来，建模教学的普及程度不断提高。不幸的是，大学缺乏K-12强调保持教师的教学技能，经常以大型讲座的形式教授物理，这阻碍了建模教学的实施。大学水平的建模倡议，重塑大学物理，尚未被广泛采用[25]。这个应用程序的中心目标是评估一个新的教学方法，以解决问题的成功要素是否可以整合到现有的介绍性大学课程，而不中断的课程格式或教学大纲。基于建模教学的思想，建模应用于问题解决（MAPS）是专门设计来帮助学生学习专家解决问题的习惯在现有的入门课程的框架和大纲。MAPS教学法最初是在2009年1月教授的为期三周的非常成功的力学复习课程中部署和进一步发展的。这篇评论将麻省理工学院考试问题（这些问题不能用简单的新手方法解决）的分数提高了一个标准差，在科罗拉多科学学习态度调查（CLASS）的大多数类别上都取得了前所未有的进步，并大大提高了学生解决问题的信心。为了实现这一目标，我们必须解决几个研究问题：我们如何有效地将MAPS整合到麻省理工学院的传统入门课程？我们能否通过将CLASS调查、MIT考试问题和力学基线测试的各个方面结合到一个新的专家清单中（我们正在NSF的支持下开发）来找到一个改进的专业性衡量标准？我们正在开发的用于教授MAPS教学法的教学材料有多有效？我们的开源WikiTextBook补充材料是否对学生开放，并通过上述工具衡量是否成功？基于我们的复习课程的成功和为它开发的材料，我们已经奠定了基础，以解决我们的中心问题：我们能否证明，我们的MAPS教学法可以增加学生的专业知识时，作为传统的入门课程的补充？如果我们学会了如何在这方面取得成功，我们将有真实的机会在广泛的入门课程中培养专家解决问题的技能。 公共卫生相关性：我们在本申请中描述的项目旨在开发和评估一种物理教学法，该教学法指导学生远离通过方程搜索或记忆的新手方法解决问题。我们正在开发和测试一种教学法，该教学法有望帮助学生制定解决科学问题的通用方法，该方法从对情况的结构化理想化开始，并探索所采用的理想化细节与应用的原则之间的联系问题的解决方案。这一目标与公共卫生有关，因为物理学是医学预科和其他健康科学专业学生的必修课程，而且它是朝着满足2004年哈佛医学院招生要求工作组建议的方向取得的进展，该工作组建议“在本科科学课程中应强调思想的实验基础，而不是死记硬背原理。”[1]

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application addresses broad Challenge Area (12) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education (STEM) and specific Challenge Topic 12-OD-104: Innovative Approaches to STEM Education. One of the central missions of the STEM curriculum is the teaching of problem solving skills. This goal is one of the major reasons that introductory college physics is often required of majors in chemistry, biology, premed and other health science majors. Unfortunately, research literature shows that ¿ Most students in introductory physics courses use novice techniques to solve problems [5, 17] ¿ Over 90% of problems in even reformed introductory college physics textbooks enable novice-like problem solving approaches rather than encouraging expert-like ones [19] ¿ Most introductory courses reduce students' general expertise and their confidence in their own problem solving ability [7, 8]. Cognitive psychologists showed in the early '80's that experts approach problem solving in a qualitatively different way from beginners (novices) [5]. Several pedagogies have been developed to teach expert characteristics [9, 10, 20-23], among the best being Modeling Instruction. Introduced in 1995, Modeling Instruction was used by 6% of high school physics teachers in 2005 and has continued to grow in popularity since [24]. Unfortunately, colleges lack the K-12 emphasis on keeping teachers' teaching skills current and often teach physics in a large-lecture format which precludes implementation of Modeling Instruction. The college-level modeling initiative, Remodeling University Physics, has not been widely adopted [25]. The central goal of this application is to evaluate whether elements of a new pedagogical approach to problem solving success can be integrated into an existing introductory college course without disruption of the course format or syllabus. Based on ideas from modeling instruction, Modeling Applied to Problem Solving (MAPS) is designed specifically to help students learn expert problem solving habits within the framework and syllabus of an existing introductory course. The MAPS pedagogy was initially deployed and further developed in a very successful three-week mechanics review course taught in January 2009. The review raised test scores on MIT exam problems (which are not solvable by plug and chug novice methods) by over one standard deviation, gave unprecedented gains on most categories of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), and dramatically increased students' problem solving confidence. To achieve this objective we have to address several research questions: ¿ How effectively can we integrate MAPS into MIT's traditional introductory course? ¿ Can we find an improved measure of expertness by combining aspects of the CLASS survey, the MIT exam problems and the Mechanics Baseline Test into a new expert inventory (that we're developing with NSF support)? ¿ How effective are the instructional materials that we are developing to teach MAPS pedagogy? ¿ Is our open source WikiTextBook supplement accessible to students and successful as measured by the above instruments? Building on the success of our review course and the materials developed for it, we have laid the groundwork to address our central question: can we demonstrate that our MAPS pedagogy can increase the expertise of students when used as a supplement in a traditional introductory course? If we learn how to succeed at this, we will have a real chance to foster expert problem solving skills across a wide range of introductory courses. Public Health Relevance: The project we describe in this application seeks to develop and evaluate a physics pedagogy that instructs students away from solving problems through the novice methods of equation hunting or memorization. We are developing and testing a pedagogy that promises to help students develop a universal approach to scientific problems that begins with a structured idealization of the situation and leads to an exploration of the connection between the details of the idealization employed and the principles applied in the solution of the problem. This goal is relevant to public health because physics is a required element of the curriculum for premedical and other health science students and because it constitutes progress toward meeting the recommendation of the 2004 Working Group on Admissions Requirements for the Harvard Medical School that the "experimental basis of ideas, not rote recitation of principles, should be emphasized in the undergraduate science curriculum." [1]