Ill-Structured Problem Solving in Engineering Education - CiteSeerX

Session F3F

Panel - Ill-Structured Problem Solving in Engineering Education Mats Daniels 1, Angela Carbone 2, Amie Hauer 3, and Dan Moore4 Abstract - There is a gap between the problems our students typically encounter in their education and the problems they are likely to be asked to solve in their future employments. It is convenient in education, both in specification and assessment, to provide fairly wellstructured problems, and many instructors view using such problems as a way to manage the learning process. However, real-world problems are typically ill-structured and we argue that using only well-structured problems as learning examples does not prepare our students for the problems they will encounter in their professional life. Preparing students for dealing with ill-structured, or open ended, problems is an educational challenge involving critical thinking skills, which most instructors and curriculum designers view as an important goal of the learning process. This panel is designed to address issues of open or ill-structured problems from learning aspects. The panel will also cover concrete examples to inspire education designers preparing students for their future careers by improving their problem solving capabilities through use of ill-structured problems as learning examples. Index Terms – Ill-structured problem solving, Professional skills, Open ended problems, Real-world problems, Theories of learning, Situated cognition. INTRODUCTION As education providers we strive for higher-order critical thinking skills in our students. In this panel we will discuss how ill-structured problem solving can be used to reach educational goals in engineering education. Learning goals for engineering education will be discussed to address why illstructured problems is a suitable part of the courses. A set of issues related to ill-structured problem solving will be discussed in this panel, including professional skills, knowledge construction, self-directed learning opportunities, cognitive load, learning goals, situated cognition, and concrete examples. The learning environment setting is a vital to the successful use of ill-structured problem solving as a basis for education. These settings are typically student-centered learning environments, e.g. Situated Cognition [1], Practice fields [2], and Communities of Practice [2, 3], and it will be

discussed how ill-structured problem solving is, or can be, a part of them. We will address the issue of scaffolding, and especially how much and when, since this is central to learning theories behind educational settings and while there is critique that minimal guidance is misguided in terms of learning [4]; and, we wish to provide a perspective on this. Concrete examples used by the panelists will be presented from learning environments with a focus on solving illstructured problems. These examples typically include Open Ended Group Projects (OEGP) [5], where different forms of collaboration are part of the learning environment, e.g. realworld users, industry, and students from different institutions. EDUCATIONAL GOALS Study plans for engineering education programs typically state some overarching goals, which include both general skills and specific program goals. The following educational goals are taken from a description of capabilities in IT graduates used at Auckland University of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, which is an example of general skills that most engineering education providers world wide would subscribe to. Graduate capabilities • the ability to critically evaluate information; • understanding of and commitment to continuing learning; • independent, critical and reflective judgement; • effective oral and written communication skills; • project management skills; • skills in information literacy and research; • the ability to work effectively as a member of a team; • an understanding of ethical issues; • the ability to work well with people from other cultures and backgrounds and to be sensitive to different approaches and beliefs; • understanding of the role of information technology and its impact on the environment; • the ability to develop and apply appropriate information technologies and tools to framing and solving problems and evaluating opportunities in a range of business, industry and professional domains;

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Mats Daniels, Moderator, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, [email protected] Angela Carbone, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, [email protected] 3 Amie Hauer, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, [email protected] 4 Dan Moore, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, [email protected] 2

1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F3F-1

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sound technical understanding of computing systems and hardware infrastructure. These capabilities will serve as a comparison set for our discussion about constructing learning environments for engineering students. ILL-STRUCTURED PROBLEM SOLVING Problem solving is considered a fundamental learning activity [6, 7]. In this panel, we will focus on open ended problems. In general, open ended problems are often “ill-structured”, i.e. where goals or bounds are unspecified or over-specified, unclear or insufficient in various ways; and are considered to be more complex, more open-ended, and also more real-world or indeterminate in their end goal in comparison to “wellstructured” problems [6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Though theorists may diverge as to the characteristics of ill-structured problems, many agree that knowledge of the composition (formulation) of ill-structured problems is important both for learning and teaching how to solve the problems [7, 8, 11, 15]. Next, important to tackling the issue of ill-structured problems is the understanding that solving illstructured problems requires different skills than solving wellstructured problems [8, 10, 11, 12, 13]. Yet, it is wellstructured problems that are the ones most frequently encountered in classroom environments, even as ill-structured problems are the ones more frequently encountered in everyday and professional practice [12, 14]. Thus, if part of the work of education is to prepare students for problems typically encountered, open-ended problems need to be part of the educational repertoire for scaffolds to future professional work. Additionally, it is important to discuss how to assess the outcomes of these activities both in terms of “design success” and individual learning goals/outcomes. An intent of this panel is to propose some methods and concepts that can be used in student-centered learning settings that will help instructors better equip students with skills to manage illstructured problems. CONCLUSIONS The intent of the panel is to inspire the audience to look into how to integrate solving open ended, ill-structured problems into their education by providing arguments for its importance and in providing examples of how it can be, has been, done. PANELISTS Mats Daniels is active in computing education research and has extensive experience in running courses with collaboration with student groups in other countries and with industry. Angela Carbone is in the final stages of her PhD work in computing education where identifying different aspects of problems and problem solving is a central component. She has been teaching courses using a studio based environment.

Amie Hauer is a PhD student with a focus on learning and learning technologies, where collaboration is at the focus. She has a Masters in software systems and her teaching experience is in information technology including the use of open ended problems. Dan Moore has an extensive experience with courses where collaboration with industry is a major part of the educational setting. He has also experience with courses with international student collaboration using design teams both colocated and distributed across locations and time zones as a component of the collaboration. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We wish to thank Tony Clear, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand and Michael deRaath, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia who were part of a similar panel at the ACE conference in Ballarat, Australia, 2007 for ideas and inspiration. REFERENCES [1]

Brown, J, S, Collins, A, and Daguid, P,"Situated cognition and the culture of learning", Educational Researcher, Vol 18, No 1., Jan. – Feb. 1989, pp. 32-42

[2]

Barab, S, A and Duffy, T, M,"From practice fields to communities of practice", in Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments, eds. Jonassen, D, H and Land, S, M, Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Inc,.2000, pp. 25-56

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Wenger, E, Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge University Press, 1998

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Kirschner, P, A, Sweller, J, and Clark, R, E,"Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiental, and inquiry-based teaching", Educational Psychologist, Vol 41, No 2., 2006, pp. 75-86

[5]

Faulkner, X, Daniels, M, and Newman, I,"The Open Ended Group Project: A way of including diversity in the IT curriculum", in Diversity in Information Techn ology Education: Issues and controversies, ed. Trajkovski, G, Information Science Publishing,.2006, pp. 166-195

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Davidson, J, E and Sternberg, R, J, The psychology of problem solving, Cambridge University Press, 2003

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Jonassen, D, H, "Instructional design models for well-structured and illstructured problem-solving learning outcomes", Educational technology Research and Development, Vol 45, No 1, 1997, pp. 65-94

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Reitman, W, R, Cognition and thought; an information-processing approach, Wiley, 1965

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Simon, H, A, Models of discovery: And other topics in the methods of science, D. Reidel Publishing Co, 1977

[10] Simon, H, A, Models of thought, Yale University Press, 1979 [11] Sweller, J, "Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning", Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol 12, No 2, 1988, pp. 257-285 [12] Xun, G and Land, S, M, "A conceptual framework for scaffolding illstructured problem-solving processes using question prompts and peer interaction", Educational technology Research and Development, Vol 52, No 2, 2004, pp. 5-22 [13] Kester, L, Kirschner, P, A, and van Merriënboer, J, J, G, "The management of cognitive load during complex cognitive skill


Session F3F acquisition by means of computer-simulated problem solving", British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 75, No 1, 2005, pp. 71-85 [14] Jonassen, D, H, "Using cognitive tools to represent problems", Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Vol 35, No 3, 2003, pp. 362

[15] Chen, C-H and Ge,X, "The design of a web-based cognitive modeling system to support ill-structured problem solving", British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 37, No 2, 2006, pp. 299-302
