I recently observed a high school student focus group for the development of an instrument that will examine college and career readiness in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). I was amazed (disappointed) at some of the comments the students made. But they are worth examining BECAUSE we need to be change agents! This is part of the call of STEM educators to improve knowledge, skills, and certainly dispositions.

When I think of engineering I think of a train

Research is looking stuff up on the Internet or print materials (not conducting investigations)

There is no creativity in science

Creativity can’t be taught

Problem solving can’t be taught

from lavc.edu

As part of this website (labanca.net), I maintain a Moodle.  Moodle is a course management system that allows me to conduct blended learningclasses – classes that have both a face-2-face and online component.  I use the Moodle in both my high school Applied Science Research course, and my graduate school Materials and Methods in Science Educationcourse.  These classes benefit from such environments, because there is a certain level of independence associated with them.  Allowing students a virtual component often helps to better engage them, while providing me with a systemic way of managing the content and assessments.

I wanted to move my system to a Manual Registration method, so I could save myself a step by allowing students to enter their own account information, and then provide an “enrollment key” to enter the course.  Of course, not as simple as anticipated.  First, was just trying to figure out how to get the system to allow the manual enrollment button to appear.  My problem solving was a trial-and-error method.  I clicked and looked, thought about what made logical sense, clicked some more, and eventually came to the following screen where I could enable the appropriate setting.  

OK, so now an option appears on the shell for users to set up their own accounts.  Click it, bingo, the user gets a screen to input information.  Click OK – failure.  There is an error message indicating there are SMTP issues.  I know from terminology that this is an email issue, so I pursue finding these setups.

I find the following page.  OK?  What are my settings?  Don’t know.  Call Bluehost, my provider.  Technical support gives my my SMTP host name (very obvious, I should have known this . . .)  I am now at a decision point:  do I need the additional information in the script?  I decide less testing is better, so I establish an email account for the Moodle, and provide the password.

Problem resolved.  System functioning.  This process of problem solving, for me, was a very logical/analytical process.  Very little, if any, creativity involved.  I had to trouble-shoot, test options, gather information, modify plans, involve others who had expertise .  .  . all with a tangible, well-defined goal – getting the system to work.

I recently spend part of a week at Raystown Lakecamping with my family.  My children enjoyed spending time with their cousins cliff jumping, swimming, and boating.  We did “tent it,” which always leads to some levels of uncomfort.  In order to mitigate the lack of sleeping amenities we did the traditional thing:  use an air mattress. 

 I don’t know about you, but I’ve had traditionally bad experiences with air mattresses.  Night one is usually fine, but then there seems to be a problem with air leaking, which just progressively gets worse.  The mattress gets pumped up at night, starts off firm, but by morning, various body parts are clinging to the hard ground.  Ugg. 

Thinking about this, I realized that temperatures change during the day – at night, when the mattress is full, it is cool, but during the day, the heat build up. In an air mattress, that means the molecular motion of the confined air increases, causing additional inflation and higher pressure during the day.  This then puts additional stress on the matress, which potentially creates microleaks. 

So I thought that if the pressure was relieved, this would prevent the additional pressure from building up.  Sure enough, with a partial deflation, I went back to the mattress in the afternoon to find that it felt fully inflated.  This, of course, died down during early evening, when I re-pumped the mattress before bed. 

Interesting  . . .

When I evaluate my thinking, I see this as a problem solving situation – which in my past definitions is a logical/analytical process.  However, I am forced to think that there was some creativity involved.  So I am at this cognitive dissonance trying to decide whether (or how) problem solving is a creative process.  I have traditionally distinguished problem finding and problem solving as different cognitive processes – but there may be some blurring that I need to think about more.

I am constantly amazed by the reality, that I am sitting in my kitchen, hooked up to nothing, and writing, which seamlessly travels through the air to parts unknown.  Today, I virtually spoke with my brother-in-law, the impetus to the sliced bread story and got the following link:

http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/return-common-sense

I like how we are using 21st-century skills (collaboration, written communication, problem solving) and tools (IT) to make the process almost effortless. We are such consumers of information – the real challenge is to become better producers.

I think I need to follow up with this senator and see if I can conduct a recorded phone interview to get some more perspective on this interesting story which just oozes problem finding/problem solving in such a different type of context.

I’m sure there is more to come . . .

from: kidsaccident.psy.uq.edu.au

As some might notice, I had a friend design a new header for my blog.  Mark maintains his consulting business at www.mokturtle.net.  He designed the header (which is similar to my homepage labanca.net), sent me some files, and then I had to figure out how to upload them and get them working on my WordPress blog.  I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to get it all to work. My problem solving involved several different techniques and cognitive mechanisms (from Wikipedia): 

• Brainstorming:
• suggesting a large number of solutions or ideas and combining and developing them until an optimum is found.
• Lateral thinking: approaching solutions indirectly and creatively.
• Means-ends analysis: choosing an action at each step to move closer to the goal.
• Morphological analysis: assessing the output and interactions of an entire system.
• Research: employing existing ideas or adapting existing solutions to similar problems.
• Trial-and-error: testing possible solutions until the right one is found.

Often, when some think of problem solving, especially from an educational standpoint it comes down to: 

• Hypothesis testing: assuming a possible explanation to the problem and trying to prove (or, in some contexts, disprove) the assumption.