Learning by Discovery:
what ? In my website about Education for Problem Solving, the HomePage encourages you to learn my model for Design Process — i.e. for Problem-Solving Process when you solve a problem by making something better — by thoroughly exploring the three diagrams in this page.
how? In each diagram, observe (and think about) the words & colors, and spatial relationships. Compare the diagrams, asking "how are they related?" and use the principles in each to help you understand the others.
how? If you think about the actions you use while you are solving problems, you will recognize that Your Actions are the Problem-Solving Actions you see in the diagrams, and your Discovery Learning also will be Recognition Learning.
why? Your studying may stimulate you to think about the process in new ways, or maybe it will show what you already have been thinking.
an option: If you want, skip the ideas below and begin exploring the three verbal-and-visual diagrams.
how? If you begin by studying the 3rd Diagram – this isn't recommended ! – you may think “this is too much, it's too complex, I'll never understand it.” But learning will be much easier than you think, because you can learn the model in easy-to-do steps, and the problem-solving process is logically organized. From experience you know that these two principles make learning easier, and they are explained (with illustrative examples) later.
what? With a broad definition of problem – it's any opportunity to make something better – problem solving (when we're “making things better”) includes almost everything we do in life.* This is one of the two wide scopes of Design Process, for Problem-Solving Activities (these including almost all we do) and Problem-Solving Process (it's similar for almost all we do). / * Our main problem-solving objective – for what we want to make better – can be a better product, activity, relationship, or strategy (in Design) or (in Science) a better explanatory theory. {more}
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What is Problem Solving?
what? When educators choose to use broad definitions, a problem is an opportunity to make things better in any area of life, and problem solving happens whenever we do make something better. / We can try to solve a problem and “make things better” by trying to increase quality for some aspect of life, or maintain quality by minimizing a potential decrease of quality.
why? People solve problems because we want to make things better.
what? We begin a design project (it's a problem-solving project) by asking “what do we want to make better?” When we make this decision, we Define an Objective by choosing to design (to invent, or modify, or find, or find-and-modify) a better product, activity, relationship, and/or strategy (in General Design) and/or (in Science-Design) a better explanatory theory. These objectives – extending far beyond traditional “design fields” – include almost everything we do in life. The main reason that it's basically "everything we do" is because we design-and-use a strategy MANY TIMES every day, most often by asking-and-deciding “what should I do?” or (with more details) “what is the best use of my time now? and later?” The wide variety of Problem-Solving Objectives (and thus Problem-Solving Activities) is one of the...
two wide scopes: Design Process has wide scopes for Problem-Solving Activities (because problem solving includes almost everything we do) and for Problem-Solving Process (because people use a similar problem-solving process for almost everything we do) as you will recognize when you...
[[ iou – July 14-15, I'll finish this section by describing what happens when you compare Your Actions (while you solve problems) with the Problem-Solving Actions in Design Process; and why Design Process accurately describes the Problem-Solving Process that is used by people, and is similar for almost everything we do; and I'll link to an important section that explains how these two wide scopes lead logically (based on scientific evidence) to concluding that transfers-of-skills will occur when we use Design Process. ]]
Although initially you may think Diagram 3 of Design Process “is complex and will be difficult to understand,” learning will be much easier than you think because...
you will learn the model in easy-to-do steps: An obvious application of this useful principle is to understand Diagrams 1 & 2 before you study Diagram 3. In another example, during my juggling classes (for UW Experimental College in Seattle) I explained why learning how to juggle "will be easier than it looks. ... Why? Consider this example: Imagine that we're standing at the bottom of a long stairway, and I ask you to jump all the way up to the top. Unless you're bionic or kryptonic, you'll protest ‘I can't do it!’ But if I ask you to climb to the top one step at a time, you'll easily make it because what you're trying to do is something you're capable of doing." In a similar way, students (and teachers & others) can learn Design Process in small easy-to-master steps.
the problem-solving process is logically organized: Scientific research shows the educational benefits of organizing knowledge; e.g. a logical organizing of Conceptual Knowledge leads to better understanding, remembering-transfering, and applying. A logical organization of Procedural Knowledge – as in Design Process – will be similarly helpful for improving Conditional Knowledge (and thus Action-Coordinating Strategies) and in other ways. { Some cognitive benefits of organizing are illustrated by three quizzes, with memory improving when 22 meaningless letters [tsekhauoendygcalhteynm] are organized into 6 meaningful words and then 1 interesting story. } / The apparent “initial complexity” of Design Process becomes actual “eventual simplicity” when students understand how the actions combine to form a logically organized problem-solving process. And when they recognize their own problem-solving process in Design Process. Both of these factors – organization and familiarity – help their model-understanding and their model-using become psychologically intuitive for them.
What? In the 1st Diagram ("Define and Solve"), why does The Cycle have arrows on both sides? It's easy to understand its left-side arrow (from Generate to Evaluate) — STOP READING and “think about why” if you want to self-discover the reasons for this arrow — because you must Generate An Option before you can Evaluate This Option. But there is...
• a mystery question: Why does the cycle have a right-side arrow, from Evaluate to Generate? Think about this, and then ask...
• a similar question: While you're exploring the 2nd Diagram ("Evaluate An Option" by Using Comparisons), ask yourself “after I Compare Predictions with Goals and decide that the quality-of-matching isn't fully satisfactory, what can I do next?” And maybe ask...
• a related question: “When I critically EVALUATE an Old Option, how can this help me creatively GENERATE a New Option?
All of these are basically the same question. You can answer it with your own thinking, then confirm what you have discovered by studying the 3rd Diagram that is followed by my brief explanation.
a strategy for instruction: A teacher can use these two questions to “guide the discoveries” of their students, to produce an optimal challenge that lets them have more fun and get more satisfaction during their process of learning-by-discovering.
is the 2nd Diagram (to "Evaluate An Option") due to its combination of art-and-logic, with spatial relationships & elegant symmetries in the 3 Comparisons of 3 Elements (using Predictions-Observations-Goals in two Quality Checks and a Reality Check), with color-codings for the Elements (yellow, green, gold) and Comparisons (yellow-green, blue), plus blue & black text. This diagram is my favorite – 🙂 – and I hope you also will like it, will appreciate its logical beauty and what can be learned from it. / More generally, I'm fascinated by (and have creatively designed) a wide variety of verbal-and-visual representations.
The logical integrating of Design-with-Science in the diagram can help students understand how they can improve the logical integrating of Design-with-Science in their thinking when they internalize this logic with experience in problem solving, when they practice using the diagram's comparative Evaluations for General Design (aka Design) and for Science-Design (aka Science) by using comparative Quality Checks and comparative Reality Checks to ask The Design Question and The Science Question. { more about logical integrations in The Comparisons and The Questions }
@ h.htm#inquiry0 - teacher-strats + flashcards (merge old dph into old h)
meaning of Action-Diagrams
maybe others (check old dph.htm)
[[ iou – sometime before July 20, I'll finish this section and will make the page that's intended to be used in a half-width right frame. Until then the basic ideas are described in a brief summary. ]]
In another page you can see 18 diagrams (the 3 in this page plus 15 others), including a Clicker Map and 2 isolation diagrams.
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