Problem-solving Experience Research Articles

Learning Conservation and Sustainable Development: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Conservation aud sustainable development (CSD) represent one of the most important new ways of thinking in natural resource management and policy. Cornell University has developed an iuterdiscipli nary graduate minor to include this approach in its curriculum. The concept of CSD involves working toward environmental, social, and economic goals simultaneously. Although sustainability is sometimes criticized as a vague concept, CSD can be operationaliz ed by developing indicators for different goals through collaborative processes, and seeking positive sum solutions that, while not fully solving problems of sustainability, make concrete advances across these indicators. The graduate minor at Cornell University provides students with CSD concepts and skills through: (i) a core course, “Critical Issues in Conservation and Sustainable Development,” which emphasizes the conceptual underpinnings of CSD and experience working in interdisciplinary groups to apply these concepts to case studies; (ii) a “Field Practicum in Conservation and Sustainable Development,” which provides an interdisciplinary, team problem-solving experience in Latin America; and (iii) elective courses that provide students with interdisciplinary breadth, rather than the depth fostered by traditional minors. Students have found that the CSD minor helps them situate their research in the context of practical environmental management and policy problems, and provides them with skills to mauage complex relationships with practitioners and local communities

Problem-Solving in the First Years of School

The use of problem-solving as a vehicle for learning has been incorporated into a number of school curricula. However, children in the first years of school, many of whom enter school with high levels of problem-solving experience, are often made to think in ways not always familiar to them. This article discusses the natural preference younger learners have towards cross-domainal problem-solving, and how school curricula which divide knowledge into separate learning domains do not always support this.

School and Community Partnerships: Collaborating Through the Development of Interactive, Multimedia Learning Resources

In conducting an evaluation of a new partnership between a school and an art museum, the research team discovered the value of technology in generating the motivation for collaboration between an educational and a community organisation. Together, these community~based groups had agreed to share their resources and their expertise in the creation of a CD-ROM based 'virtual museum'. This interactive multi-media product was designed to allow those without access to the museum, to visit the 'art treasures' therein. The partnership provided school students with access to community experts, involvement in the development of advancedtechnologies and experience in team work, task management and problem solving. The school benefited from having the positive potential of community partnerships in achieving educational objectives confirmed at the same time as gaining a valuable resource for future use. As a direct result of this project, the museum recognised increased exposure in the community and received a perpetual resource (the Virtual Museum CD) available for future sale and community education purposes. The predominantly graduate student research team gained a clear understanding of the processes inherent in successful school and community partnerships. The potential for this type of technology based partnership to enhance the lives of all students, including rural and isolated students, is only just beginning to be realised.

Experience is the best teacher: Avoiding the pitfalls of “Methodolotry”

Designed to help businesses achieve their goals, problem-solving methods have become our masters, driving out the thinking that is the essence of effective problem solving. Although the various problem-solving methods have their virtues, they also have their limitations, and an overreliance on these techniques can cause dysfunction. Case-based quality problem solving, a means of extracting useful lessons from past problem-solving experiences, offers an alternative to the current “methodolotry.” This article illustrates how experience—one's own and others'—can be used to solve quality problems.

Traning Future Urbanists: The Integration of Theory and Practice

I have been asked to talk about theory-practice linkages and in thinking about what I might say, it occurred to me that such linkages could be described in the context of educating future urbanists. Furthermore, linkages can best be understood by talking about “small” theories as opposed to “big theories” such as those reflected in the papers by Professors Choi and Sassen. My meaning of the term, small theory, is different from that attributed ti Merton (1957) and Baker (1968). Rather, my meaning is more closely associated with the ideas espoused by John Lyle when he described the concepts underlying the Center for Regenerative Studies and the practices that take place in that environment. In my paper, I present another example of a small theory and show how it links to practice. And like professor Lyle, my example, involves faculty and university students working together. As a prelude to my example, I will discuss some changes that have recently occurred in the training of urban planner and other in US universities. My focus will be on problem solving experiences or “practice”, which is now referred to in academic circle as community outreach. I then discuss several dimensions of outreach and give an overview of the kinds of activities our students engage in at the University of Michigan. Following my example of one such outreach activity that links theory to practice, I discuss a number of advantages as well as limitations of outreach activities as part of the training of future urbanites.

Age Differences on a Procedurally Oriented Test of Practical Problem Solving

Numerous studies have focused on developmental differences in practical problem-solving abilities. However, researchers have largely ignored the relationship among age, procedural knowledge, and problem-solving performance. The theoretical model that guided the present investigation suggests that as individuals age, they are exposed to a variety of real-world problems, which in turn should lead to the acquisition of problem-solving scripts. In the present study, a procedurally oriented, practical problem-solving measure was administered to 200 individuals aged 20 to 69 years. For each problem, subjects were required to order a set of discrete behaviors into an optimal solution sequence. These solution sequences were then compared with optimal solutions that domain area experts had established in advance. As expected, age was found to be positively related to prior problem-solving experience. However, contrary to expectations, the quality of subjects' solutions showed slight, negative age differences.

An Assessment of a Physical Chemistry Online Activity

A questionnaire and list server archive were used to investigate the perception of students and faculty who took part in a physical chemistry online project. Students at four universities worked cooperatively in their own classrooms and collaborated as a larger team on the Internet via a list server to determine the best mathematical model to describe the PV behavior of a gas at a specified temperature. The strengths of the project were the interaction among students, the use of Mathcad and modern technology, and the experience of authentic problem-solving. The weaknesses were the problems with the technology, the facilitation of interaction, and the student's ability to ask questions to solve an ill-defined problem. The suggestions for improvements focused on facilitating interuniversity interaction between students, clarifying tasks and goals, and implementation of the online activities. We discuss how our evaluation of the project guided and informed the design of a subsequent online project, and our p...

Problem-solving strategies for teaching mathematics to deaf students.

Three teaching and learning strategies for problem solving were implemented with first- and second-year deaf college students enrolled in mathematics courses at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology. These strategies involved the students in (a) giving an explanation to a peer observer in sign language, after which they would put their understanding of a problem and its solution in writing; (b) visualizing the problem-solving process prior to starting to solve a problem; and (c) observing their teacher modeling the analytical process step by step for a sample problem prior to solving math word problems. The students were asked to solve two types of problems: typical word problems, and a visual/manipulative puzzle that would provide a problem-solving experience that would contrast with the experience of solving a problem presented in text format. The results showed that these kinds of instructional strategies can enhance the problem-solving performance of deaf and hard of hearing college students.

Metareasoning and meta-level learning in a hybrid knowledge-based architecture

Ahybrid knowledge-based architecture integrates different problem solvers for the same (sub)task through a control unit operating at a meta-level, the metareasoner, which coordinates the use of, and the communication between, the different problem solvers. A problem solver is defined to be an association between a knowledge intensive (sub)task, an inference mechanism and a knowledge domain view operated by the inference mechanism in order to perform the (sub)task. Important issues in a hybrid system are the metareasoning and learning aspects. Metareasoning encompasses the functions performed by the metareasoner, while learning reflects the ability of the system to evolve on the basis of its experiences in problem solving. Learning occurs at different levels, learning at the meta-level and learning at the level of the specific problem solvers. Meta-level learning reflects the ability of the metareasoner to improve the overall performance of the hybrid system by improving the efficiency of meta-level tasks. Meta-level tasks include the initial planning of problem solving strategies and the dynamic adaptation of chosen strategies depending on new events occurring dynamically during problem solving. In this paper we concentrate on metareasoning and meta-level learning in the context of a hybrid architecture. The theoretical arguments presented in the paper are demonstrated in practice through a hybrid knowledge-based prototype system for the domain of breast cancer histopathology.

CAEP: AN EVOLUTION-BASED TOOL FOR REAL-VALUED FUNCTION OPTIMIZATION USING CULTURAL ALGORITHMS

Cultural Algorithms are computational self-adaptive models which consist of a population and a belief space. The problem-solving experience of individuals selected from the population space by the acceptance function is generalized and stored in the belief space. This knowledge can then control the evolution of the population component by means of the influence function. Here, we examine the role that different forms of knowledge can play in the self-adaptation process within cultural systems. In particular, we compare various approaches that use normative and situational knowledge in different ways to guide the function optimization process. The results in this study demonstrate that Cultural Algorithms are a naturally useful framework for self-adaptation and that the use of a cultural framework to support self-adaptation in Evolutionary Programming can produce substantial performance improvements over population-only systems as expressed in terms of (1) systems success ratio, (2) execution CPU time, and (3) convergence (mean best solution) for a given set of 34 function minimization problems. The nature of these improvements and the type of knowledge that is most effective in producing them depend on the problem's functional landscape. In addition, it was found that the same held true for the population-only self-adaptive EP systems. Each level of self-adaptation (component, individual, and population) outperformed the others for problems with particular landscape features.

Methods of pairwise comparisons and fuzzy global criterion for multiobjective optimization in structural engineering

The method of pairwise comparison inherently contains information of ambiguity, fuzziness and conflict in design goals for a multiobjective structural design, This paper applies the principle of paired comparison so that the vaguely formulated problem can be modified and a set of numerically acceptable weight would reflect the relatively important degree of multiple objectives. This paper also presents a fuzzy global criterion method (FGCM(lambda)) included fuzzy constraints that coupled with the objective weighting rank obtained from the modified pairwise comparisons for fuzzy multiobjective optimization problems. Descriptions in sequence of this combined method and problem solving experiences are given in the current article. Multiobjective design examples of truss and mechanical spring structures illustrate this optimization process containing the revising judgement techniques.

Learning cases to resolve conflicts and improve group behavior

Groups of agents following fixed behavioral rules can be limited in performance and efficiency. Adaptability and flexibility are key components of intelligent behavior which allow agent groups to improve performance in a given domain using prior problem-solving experience. We motivate the utility of individual learning by group members in the context of overall group behavior. In particular, we propose a framework in which individual group members learn cases from problem-solving experiences to improve their model of other group members. We use a testbed problem from the Distributed Artificial Intelligence literature to show that simultaneous learning by group members can lead to significant improvement in group performance and efficiency over agent groups following static behavioral rules.

A New Angle on Stars

At some point in any geometry class, students examine the sums of the measures of interior and exterior angles of simple polygons. These concepts can be further reinforced by examining the sums of the interior angles of other polygonal shapes. What began as an investigation of a question about a fivepointed star with one of my classes became an extended problem-solving and problem-posing experience that led us to computer explorations on The Geometer's Sketchpad (Jackiw 1991) and conjectures of broad generalizations through inductive reasoning.

Teaching tools. A simulated clinical problem-solving experience.

Teaching tools. A simulated clinical problem-solving experience.

Farm Structure Simulation: A Tool for Effective Learning

Problem-solving experiences can be used to help students understand and anchor abstract economic principles. This article examines the development, implementation, and assessment of a farm structure simulation model that allows students to manage hypothetical farms. In the simulation exercise, students apply firm growth and asset valuation concepts in an uncertain and dynamic environment Land can be rented or purchased through negotiations between farms. Decisions are made on production levels, firm size, asset values, and investments. Students experience the consequences of their decisions through changes in the level of hypothetical profits. The simulation helps develop problem-solving and interpersonal skills. The degree of complexity contained in the simulation can be adjusted for the course level and background of students. Uncertain product prices and government programs can be introduced in later stages of the simulation if appropriate. Student responses indicated increased understanding of economic decisions related to production levels, profits, firm size, rental rates, and diversification. A comparison of surveys and examinations indicated a positive and statistically significant relationship between perceived and actual understanding of these economic concepts. Student responses indicated that the simulation exercise was worthwhile and enjoyable. The simulation helps students better understand the process of managing a firm in a dynamic and uncertain environment. Active involvement in the learning process with the simulation motivates students, stimulates critical thinking, and increases understanding of economic concepts.

The Problem-Based Learning Tutorial: Cultivating Higher Order Thinking Skills

In today's information age, it is increasingly important to help learners develop higher order thinking skills as well as a flexible knowledge base. Research in cognitive science and education suggests that both of these aims can be achieved by having students learn through solving problems. Problem-based learning (PBL), with its emphasis on both strategies and content, is particularly well suited to achieving these aims. In PBL, student learning begins with a problem to be solved and includes cycles of reflection on the problem-solving experience. This paper will discuss the tutorial process in PBL and how it can be used to cultivate higher order thinking skills.

Leadership Perspectives in Horticulture: Meeting the Needs of Horticulture Students Through Interdisciplinary Education

Placing the horticulture student on a path of professional development as a society-ready graduate for the 21st century takes more than technical knowledge. New types of team-oriented organizations are being created that were not even imagined a few years ago. To help empower students to survive in these organizations, the course “Leadership Perspectives in Horticulture” was created. This interdisciplinary course serves as a model for leadership skill instruction by incorporating the component of leadership development into a technical horticulture course. The objectives of this course are to provide academic and historical perspectives in technical horticulture issues, develop skills in leadership, problem solving, and team building, complete a theoretical study of specific leadership models, and blend theoretical leadership models with horticulture issues by completing a problem solving experience. An overview of the course in addition to changes in leadership behavior of students will be discussed.

Activities: Patterns and Puzzles for Pyramids and Prisms

Teacher's Guide: The construction projects, puzzles, and experiments presented here provide hands-on experiences in spatial visualization and problem solving for an important class of three-dimensional figures: pyramids and prisms. Students will enjoy creating physical models and performing experiments with the models, but the main goals of the activities are to develop students' geometric intuition and build a concrete foundation on which abstract principles can be grounded.

Attachment and Joint Problem-solving Experiences During the Preschool Period

Attachment and Joint Problem-solving Experiences During the Preschool Period

Eliminating overconfidence in psychodiagnosis: Strategies for training and practice.

Research in several domains has revealed that when individuals are asked to estimate the probability that their judgments are correct, they reveal an overconfidence effect. Judgments produced in decision environments such as psychodlagnosis, which are by nature complex and ambiguous, appear to be most vulnerable to overconfidence. By implication, this phenomenon threatens the validity of clinical judgment and subjects clients to risks of flawed diagnoses and unsuitable treatments. The authors propose that effective remedies to overconfidence begin in training programs that lead students through problem-solving experiences that can invalidate facile, premature, and dubious diagnostic judgments. Syndromes defined by the DSM-IV are permeable and fuzzy sets, and students must be trained to assign membership to these sets with caution.