Advancing research on problem solving for innovations in the 21st Century: A self-regulated Ill-structured problem-solving framework and its implications for instructional design and research

• In Event: ETR&D- Awards and Presentations (v)

Short Description

Problem solving, especially of ill-structured nature, is one of the most essential 21st century competencies. It contributes to innovation, creativity, and success in this digital world. Associated with the competence of ill-structured problem solving are many other critical skills, such as inquiries, argumentation, information literacy, decision making, and collaboration. Therefore, gaining a deep understanding of ill-structured problem-solving processes is of paramount importance to design learning environments and scaffolding tools to support students problem-solving experiences.

In this presentation, Dr. Ge will present her research development on ill-structured problem solving and designing scaffolding strategies and tools to support students’ problem-solving processes. After a critical review of the past research, Dr. Ge will present a self-regulated ill-structured problem-solving framework to fill a gap in the problem-solving literature. This framework clarifies the interrelationship between problem solving processes in various stages (problem representation and solution generation) and iterative self-regulation processes in phases (planning, execution, and reflection), as well as some other factors that play a critical role in those processes: motivation, emotion, and epistemic beliefs. A comparative case study will be presented to demonstrate how this self-regulated ill-structured problem-solving framework guided her research team to examine and understand various behavioral patterns of college students in information problem solving, what factors drove their regulation behaviors, and what factors triggered their decisions at each point and about what paths or solutions to select.

This research provides multiple implications for instructional design practice and research. The self-regulated ill-structured problem-solving framework helps to identify students’ weaknesses, challenges, and difficulties during ill-structured problem-solving activities from the lens of self-regulation. It helps instructional designers and educators to design appropriate scaffolding tools and strategies to facilitate and assess students’ problem-solving processes in ill-structured tasks. It also provides a useful conceptual model for designing automated support and assessment system for enhancing students’ self-regulated problems solving experiences and conducting data analytics.

Bio. Dr. Xun Ge is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on ill-structured problem-solving, metacognition, scaffolding, and designing technology-supported learning environments. She been involved in various design and development projects, including problem-based, project-based, game-based, virtual reality, and makerspace learning environments for various disciplines and different educational and training contexts. Dr. Ge’s scholarly work, which intersects cognition, motivation, design, development, and assessment, has been published extensively in top-tier journals and books and has been well cited and recognized in the field of Learning Design and Technology. Dr. Ge is the recipient of multiple national / international awards for her scholarly accomplishments, including AECT’s “Young Scholar Award,” “Outstanding Journal Article Award,” and “Outstanding International Research Collaboration Award”. Dr. Ge is the co-editor of Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning and an editorial board member to several other major journals in the interdisciplinary fields of instructional design and technology, learning sciences, and educational psychology.

Author

• Presenter: Xun Ge, University of Oklahoma