Special session - cognitive Legos: helping your students construct scientifically accurate mental models

Abstract

This interactive session provides an active learning environment where participants: discusses mental models and how they can be used to help shape appropriate pedagogy; engage in discipline-based discussions about the mental models engineering students use to explain certain scientific concepts; and brainstorm ideas about instruction that helps students construct scientifically accurate mental models of the concepts we discuss in the session. The session expands upon the successful interactive sessions at Frontiers in Education 2003 ("Why are some science and engineering concepts so difficult to learn? identifying, assessing, and 'repairing' student misunderstanding of important concepts") and 2004 ("Concept-based engineering education: designing instruction to facilitate student understanding of difficult concepts in science and engineering"). However, participants do not need to have attended those sessions to benefit from this one