Multi-phased Cases (PSLP)

Multi-stage cases have a specific goal. For example, students might be asked to make a recommendation on extending the capacity of a factory in an industrial engineering course, or determine what is ailing some trees in landscape management. Depending on the course, smaller-scale problems can be worked during a 50 minute period, or as a larger assignment that might take up to one-two weeks.

Rich, detailed, multimedia information about the case is made available to students. This information can be either relevant, or not needed to solve the problem. The instructor can group the information, e.g. databases of historical trends, numerical results of tests, observations, interviews with clients or experts, potentially applicable concepts, and descriptions of principles possibly related to the problem. This information can be links to external web-sites, or stored locally.

Students work their way through complete a series of intermediate tasks such as framing the problem, performing a qualitative analysis, producing an intermediate report to a client. These tasks provide a structure for students to develop their problem-solving skills. As an example, the screenshot below shows the tasks that students are asked to complete in a horticulture class.

We have completed several studies that look at different aspects of how student's problem-solving work improves after working on these multi-phased cases

1) Distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information

2) Improved student strategies about how to start problems

Most students struggle when faced with complex and open-ended tasks because the strategies taught in schools and universities simply require finding and applying the correct formulae or strategy to answer well-structured, algorithmic problems. For students to develop their ability to solve ill-structured problems, they must first believe that standardized procedural approaches will not always be sufficient for solving engineering and scientific challenges. In this paper we document the range of beliefs university students have about problem-solving. Students enrolled in a physics course submitted a written reflection both at the start and the end of the course on how they solve problems. We coded approximately 500 of these reflections for the presence of different problem-solving approaches. At the start of the semester over 50% of the students mention in written reflections that they use Rolodex equation matching, i.e. they solve problems by searching for equations that have the same variables as the knowns and unknowns. We then describe the extent to which students’ beliefs about physics problem-solving change by the end of a semester-long course that emphasized problem-solving via context-rich, multifaceted problems. The frequency of strategies such as the Rolodex method reduces only slightly by the end of the semester. However, there is an increase in students describing more expansive strategies within their reflections. In particular there is a large increase in describing the use of diagrams, and thinking about concepts first.