Abstract

Modeling is an important element of discovery and design processes because it can help individuals to comprehend and facilitate solutions to problems, mediate among mental and external representations, and off-load cognitive demands. However, engaging in model generation, comprehension, and transformation requires the orchestration of domain knowledge, meta-representational cknowledge, and various reasoning processes. This study aims to understand the interplay between domain knowledge, meta-representational knowledge, and students’ reasoning processes while engaging in modeling activity. Specifically, our goal is to investigate: (a) the types and quality of knowledge students used when performing modeling activities, and (b) the differences in types of knowledge used by students regarding their performance in a modeling and simulation challenge. Our qualitative analysis focused on verbal descriptions via a retrospective semi-structured interview and artifacts created by seventeen students after engaging in synthetic modeling activity. The resulting analysis reports overall quality for the types of domain and meta-representational knowledge that students used along with reasoning processes during synthetic modeling activity. The analysis also compared and contrasted the patterns of conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills between three groups, which differed in terms of modeling performance.

摘要

建模是发现和设计过程的重要元素，因为它可以帮助个人理解和促进解决问题的方法，在心理和外部表示之间进行调解，并减轻认知需求。但是，参与模型生成，理解和转换需要协调领域知识，元表示知识和各种推理过程。这项研究旨在了解领域知识，元表征知识和学生的推理过程之间的相互作用，同时参与建模活动。具体而言，我们的目标是调查：（a）学生在进行建模活动时使用的知识的类型和质量，以及（b）学生在建模和仿真挑战中的表现方面所使用的知识类型的差异。我们的定性分析集中于通过回顾性半结构化访谈进行的口头描述，以及十七名学生在进行合成建模活动后创建的人工制品。结果分析报告了学生在综合建模活动中使用的领域和元表示知识类型的总体质量以及推理过程。该分析还比较并对比了三组之间在概念表现和解决方案上的概念理解和解决问题的能力模式。结果分析报告了学生在综合建模活动中使用的领域和元表示知识类型的总体质量以及推理过程。该分析还比较并对比了三组之间在概念表现和解决方案上的概念理解和解决问题的能力模式。结果分析报告了学生在综合建模活动中使用的领域和元表示知识类型的总体质量以及推理过程。该分析还比较并对比了三组之间在概念表现和解决方案上的概念理解和解决问题的能力模式。