1. Week 11 - Teaching by fostering problem solving skills
Teaching CS
Week 11
- Teaching by fostering problem solving skills

2. Question
Can we teach students problem solving?
In-class discussion…

3. Can Problem Solving Skills be Taught?
An important goal of most educational institutions is the improvement of the human mind.
This improvement is defined as making students effective problem solvers.
When faced with a problem, we want students to figure out an appropriate solution.

4. Question
How many different pizzas can be made with the following toppings:
Mushroom
Olives
Green Pepper
Pepperoni
Banana Pepper
Mozzarella Cheese
Swiss Cheese
Tomato
Squash

5. Pizza Puzzle
If you have not known the formula for finding the number of combinations, this problem requires creative problem solving strategies. Otherwise, you will be spending too much time listing all the options...
In today’s lecture, we will discuss the direct approaches to teaching problem solving skills.

6. Principles of Teaching Problem Solving
What to teach: One ability versus many cognitive skills.
Where should problem solving strategies be taught?
How should problem solving skills be taught?
When should problem solving skills be taught?

7. What to teach: One ability versus many cognitive skills.
One of the earliest battle between Galton (1983) and Binet (1962) was whether intelligence was a single ability or a collection of smaller skills.
Galton proposed it as a single ability, called human faculty.
His approach failed to correlate with students’ school grades.
Binet proposed that intellectual ability is a collection of smaller, component skills.
This approach was supported by research and received more attention and acceptance.

8. Mayer (1992) also sees intelligence as a collection of smaller, component skills.
Representational processes – for building a coherent and useful internal representations
Relate to problem to a previous problem
Restate the problem in other words
Draw a picture or diagram of the problem
Solution processes- for creating, carrying out and monitoring a plan
Working from the goal to the givens
Breaking the problem into smaller parts
Making moves that solve a particular problem.

9. Polya (1945) also sees intelligence as a collection of smaller, component skills.
Polya argued that students should be asked to solve problems and to observe others solve problems, with emphasis on process of solving rather than on the final answer.
Understand the problem. The problem solver must see what is given, what is unknown, and what operations are allowed. In short, the problem solver must represent the problem.
Devise a plan: The problem solver must determine a general course of attach, such as restating the problem so that it is more like a familiar problem
Carry out a plan: The problem solver must carry out the computations and other needed operations
Look back: The problem solver looks over the processes he or she went through, trying to see how this experience can be helpful in solving other problems.

10. Criterion 1:
The research is in favor of teaching component skills for more effective problem solving.
Problem solving can be and should be broken down into individual representational or solution strategies that can be taught.
The implications for the design of a problem-solving program are that the content of the course should be definable skills for representing and solving problems, including skills for planning and monitoring one’s plans.

11. Where should problem-solving strategies be taught?
Looking for intelligence as specific or general:
Another concern was whether problem solving should be taught as a separate general course or within specific subject areas.
Research suggest that expertise is highly domain specific.
Cognitive skills needed in one domain may not be related to other domains.

12. Criterion 2:
Teaching problem solving is different in different subject areas
Research suggests that it is best to have students learn on problem solving tasks that are similar to the tasks they will be expected to perform later.

13. How should problem-solving skills be taught?
The question is focusing on giving students practice in producing the right answer or in helping students understand the process of successful problem solving.
Research supports that successful problem solving requires performance in subject areas by focusing on process rather than product and giving students practice in comparing their strategies to those of models

14. Criterion 3:
The method of problem solving should focus on modeling of the steps on the problem solving process rather than solely on the product of problem solving.
In particular, students need practice in relating to their own problem solving processes to those of models.

15. When should problem solving strategies be taught?
The last thing about teaching problem solving concerns the issue of when to teach higher order problem solving skills
Do higher order skills require lower knowledge and skills?

16. Criterion 4:
Research suggests that students can and should master higher order thinking skills (e.g. problem solving) even before they have fully mastered lower-level skills.
However, the teacher must scaffold the task by removing the need to perform some of the lower skills.
Apprenticeship model has been used all over the world that students learn higher order thinking skills from experts without any previous knowledge.

17. Next week Next week is our CS undergraduate micro teaching week.
You will be working on teaching a 15 minutes session using problem based learning.
I want you to pick an entry level topic from one of your classes and apply the criteria we learned today.
All the students will be teaching only 15 minutes and will discuss for 5 minutes on how their teaching applied problem based learning strategies we learned today.

18. References
Mayer, R. E. (2003). Learning and instruction. Pearson.