Applying Deliberate Practice to Facilitate Schema Acquisition in Learning Introductory Mechanics

Work in Progress: Evaluating the Effect of Symbolic Problem Solving on Testing Validity and Reliability

“…Throughout weeks 3 and 7, students were assigned daily homework to help them develop skills for applying the symbolic problem-solving approach. The homework problems were designed following the instructional design model Four Component Instructional Design (4C/ID), which provides systematic strategies for developing learning tasks to help novices learn effectively and efficiently [9,14]. Since the problem-solving process can be divided into two stages --setting up equations and solving equations --each stage requires different skills, so students need to practice with problems targeting the desired skills.…”

“…For example, setting up the equation 𝛼(𝑡)𝑑𝑡 = 𝑑𝜔 has a lower cognitive level than setting up the equation 𝑑𝑡 = 𝑑𝜔 as the latter requires the application of the chain rule, which many students find challenging to master. A task analysis was conducted to identify the cognitive levels [9]. See the sample problems in Appendix B for different problem types and cognitive levels.…”

Some thoughts for teaching engineering statics

“…Engineering statics is a very important course for any mechanical engineering program. Lots of literature proposed and implemented different approaches to facilitate students to be successful in engineering statics, such as mechanical breadboard [1], different teaching styling [5], hands-on design project [6], sketch tool in SolidWorks [7], applying numerical modeling techniques [8], animated GIF files [9], task-analysis-guided deliberate practice [10], the explored view [11] and the inquiry-based approach [12], etc.…”