Precllege Electrical Engineering Instruction Do Abstract or 前大学电气工程指令做抽象或

1、pre-college electrical engineering instruction: do abstract or contextualized representations promote better learning?dr. roxana moreno, university of new mexicodr. martin reisslein, arizona state universitydr. gamze ozogul, arizona state universityfrontiers in education, october 18 - 21, 2009, san

2、antonio, tx pre-college engineering educationothe k-12 school audience has been identified as a key target for improving engineering education. oinvestigating methods that can help increase the performance and enthusiasm of pre-college students is a major focus.ohow to help pre-college students deve

3、lop problem-solving skills and positive perceptions towards engineering education? oa promising technique shown to promote problem-solving skills in well-structured domains such as physics or mathematics is worked-example instruction. two conflicting hypothesesocontextualized representations promote

4、 learningnrealistic problem representations that are anchored in learners past experiences promote learning by activating prior knowledge that relates to the problem.npredictions: c group will show higher transfer, lower difficulty perceptions, higher perceptions of the program usefulness, especiall

5、y of the problem representations. oabstract representations promote learningnabstract problem representations help learners focus on relevant (structural) rather than irrelevant problem information (superficial)npredictions: a group will show higher transfer, lower difficulty perceptions, higher per

6、ceptions of the program usefulness, especially of the problem representations. research questionsodoes contextualizing problems during worked-example instruction promote the near and/or far transfer of the principles learned?odoes contextualizing problems during worked-example instruction affect stu

7、dents ability to represent novel problems? odoes contextualizing problems during worked- example instruction affect students learning perceptions?methodoparticipantsn86 pre-college students (54 females and 32 males). nage: m =15.4 years (sd = 1.43 years)nethnicityo42 (48.8 %) students hispanic ameri

8、cano24 (27.9 %) caucasian o6 (7.0 %) african american o2 (2.3 %) native american o2 (2.3 %) asian americano10 (11.6 %) other ethnicities materialsocomputerized materialsndemographic information questionnairenpretestninstructional session nproblem-solving practice sessionnprogram rating questionnaire

9、opaper-pencil materialsnposttest treatment conditionsoabstract (a)nabstract textnabstract representationsocontextualized (c)ncontextualized text ncontext representations resultsopretestnno significant differences between groupsoabstract, m = 2.12 (max 6), sd = 0.87ocontextualized, m = 2.29, sd = 1.0

10、4 of(1, 84) = 0.65, p = .42oresearch question 1: does contextualizing problems promote the near and/or far transfer of the principles learned?ntreatment effect on near transferoabstract, m = 4.86 (max 9), sd = 3.78 ocontextualized, m = 3.09, sd = 3.84of(1, 83) = 4.98, mse = 14.51, p = .03nno treatme

11、nt effect on far transfer oabstract, m = 1.61(max 9), sd = 2.69ocontextualized, m = 0.96, sd = 2.37of(1, 83) =1.62, mse = 6.41, p = .21results_ continueoresearch question 2: does contextualizing problems affect students ability to represent novel problems?n15 % of the participants spontaneously prod

12、uced graphic representations of posttest problems. nsix of these students were in a group and 7 were in c group. ngroup a produced significantly better representations of the posttest problems than group coabstract, m = 28.33 (max 60), sd = 17.52ocontextualized, m = 9.38, sd = 6.26of(1, 10) = 5.39,

13、mse = 176.63, p = .04.results_ continueoresearch question 3: does contextualizing problems affect students learning perceptions?nno significant differences between the treatment groups on ratings of overall program usefulness (p = .60) nno significant differences between the treatment groups on diff

14、iculty perceptions (p = .26) nmarginally significant difference for representation usefulness ratings. group c group a, f(1, 84) = 2.84, mse = 0.86, p = .10.theoretical implicationsoabstract representations help learners focus on relevant structural information underlying isomorphic problemsothe fin

15、dings support a coherence principle for worked-example engineering education according to which visual adjuncts that are not necessary to promote the learning objectives of a lesson should be minimized.othe marginal tendency in favor of group c on the picture representation usefulness suggests that realistic problem representations may create an illusion of understanding (they are perceived to be more useful but do not promote learning).practical implicationsopre-college engineering instruction should focus on the developmen