An Eye-movement Study on Problem Finding Process of Undergraduates

Identifying competent problem posers and exploring their characteristics

“…Considering next the stages of constructing and expressing the problem, it was interesting to find that there was no significant group difference for any of the four problem posing tasks. This is in accord with earlier research (Chen & Zheng, 2014), which found no significant difference between high-and low-ability undergraduates on several eye-tracking metrics including the total fixation duration when posing problems. Problem posing as a non-goal-based and divergent thinking activity differs from problem solving (Silver, 1997).…”

“…The eye movement metrics we adapted in this research, as well as the approach we used to study them, can be useful to future problem posing studies. Based also on the findings of a previous eye-movement study (Chen & Zheng, 2014) that explored the problem-finding process of two groups of undergraduate students with different levels of problem finding ability and that, similar to our study, found no significant group differences in most of the static eye-movement metrics they measured (e.g., total fixation duration, average fixation duration, fixation counts, and pupil diameters), we believe that dynamic eye-movement metrics like scanpath may be more sensitive or suited to analyzing how competent posers dynamically process information in the problem posing process (compare pieces of information, move back and forth between pieces of information, move to a different idea or approach, etc.). Finally, given that eye fixations and verbalization offer complementary ways to capture cognitive processes to some extent (Stieff et al, 2011), future research can supplement our eye-tracking methodology with recall interviews or think alouds in order to delve deeper into possible differences between more-and less-competent problem posers.…”