CH 13: “e-Learning to Build Problem-Solving Skills”

Converting routine automatons to active thinkers

Problem-Solving Skills Are:

• Cognitive Skills– Conceptual understanding

• Metaskills– Strategic understanding

• Motivation– Drive to persist and solve problem

An army bus holds 36 soldiers. If 1,128 soldiers are being bused to their training site, how many buses are needed?

•31 or 32?

Problem-Solving Principles:1. Use of job contexts

• Lack of transfer

2. Thinking processes vs. job knowledge• Tell or show-and-do vs. explicit training of

invisible mental processes

E.g. Alan Schoenfeld’s experiment:

Novice Pattern

READ PROBLEM EXPLORE

Expert Pattern

READ PROBLEM

ANALYZE

PLAN & IMPLEMENT

VERIFY

EXPLORE

Problem-Solving Principles continued:

3. Learner awareness of problem-solving processes

• Assignments to perform activities on worked examples of expert problem-solving

• Assignments to write out problem-solving plans

• Visualizations of learners’ problem-solving paths

4. Job-specific problem-solving processes