Effects, meaning and learning processes regarding experts' stories and novice problem-solving in an ill-structured problem-solving environment [electronic resource]
說明
193 p
附註
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 62-06, Section: A, page: 2028
Advisers: David H. Jonassen; Phillip H. Henning
Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Pennsylvania State University, 2001
The situations that practitioners typically have to face in the workplace are filled with ill-structured problems. A case library, a systematic collection and organization of a number of experts' experiences, encoded as cases, and presented in the form of stories to learners while interacting with a task environment, is considered by many scholars as a way to increase ill-structured problem-solving skill in novices. Despite the acknowledged potential of case libraries, no prior studies have been conducted that clearly isolate the effect that a case library may have on the acquisition of ill-structured problem-solving skills on novices. For this reason, this mixed-model design study, quantitative and qualitative, attempts to shed some light into the effects, meaning and learning processes regarding experts' stories and novice problem solving. Forty-four undergraduates were subjected to the following: a pretest, random assignment to one of three groups (experimental or case library with stories, comparable or fact sheet with material comparable to the stories but presented as facts, and control or text randomly selected from a textbook unrelated to the material), and post test. The tests, divided in two parts, attempted to measure whether the experimental group incorporated the lessons to be learned from the stories in the case library. The results on one part seemed to indicate that indeed the case library supported ill-structured problem-solving skills when compared to fact sheets or random text, whereas on the other part it did not. For the qualitative part, six students, two from each experimental situation, were engaged in separate in-depth interviews to learn about how they went about solving problems in school and how stories could form part of this process. In addition, three novice practitioners were engaged through two in-depth interviews and two problem-solving sessions in order to learn about problem-solving processes and to determine whether stories were an important component of these processes. Based on this research, a model representing how stories form part of the process of problem solving is presented and discussed in terms of the data collected and in terms of other theories. Implications for instructional designers are also provided
