Nelson did talk about PBL in his posting. After I review the paper a little bit more, I think the key point from Spector is not just to point out that PBL (or PCI) does not have strong theoretical foundation. Also, he wants to suggest a research issue for PBL - the difficulty of assessing high-order thinking (or learning in complex domain).
It is interesting to see Spector to talk about "short term goal" and "long term goal" for PBL. I believe it matches the theme from Seel (2003) that the mental model of the learners revise over time. The goal of educators should be move the mental model of the learners closer to the "final state". In the context of PBL, it will be more expert like.
My question: is it a reasonable progression for medical students (or other students) to first manage what is on-hand? and then developing high-order thinking skills? Do we have enough evidence to suggest that PBL is good for those short term goals? I read there are mixed results from PBL, but a thorough analysis need to be done to see why mixed results were found.
I think Eseryel & Spector (2003) can serve as a respond to the Spector (2003) future research direction. Eseryel & Spector (2003) study ID experts who solve problem in a complex domain. They found recognizable patterns in their representation and solution. With this finding, we may find a way assess high-order thinking skill in complex domain by comparing novice CID with expert CID. Actually, I think researchers have done this kind of comparison for some time (even though they may not use CID). However, Eseryel and Spector (2003) provides empirical evidences that the CID of an expert may be the final state that is discussed in Seel (2003).
So, may I use this argument to use ONE expert CID as my "rubric" (providing that I convince my reader he/she is indeed an expert in the field) for a study?
One more point: longitudinal study is important since the mental model revise over time. I think the research question should be how to make the revision happen (and, happen in a faster rate).
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By the way, the paper Deniz gave us stated that we should quote it as a AERA conference paper, but in D2L, it looks like a journal paper. What should be the proper citation for Eseryel and Spector?
I don't remember ever saying it as an AERA paper. The proper reference is in D2L. It should be Eseryel, D. & Spector, J. M. (2002). Using causal influence diagrams to assess learning. In B. Mann, Assessing web-based teaching and learning.
Kudos! Eseryel & Spector (2003) is a novel approach to assessing mental model of the experts. I like Victor's idea of comparing novice CID with expert CID.
Since it is in casual diagrams, is there a way of automating the comparison between novice's and expert CID?
i'm all for longitudinal study but time and $$$. Maybe we can have students solve more complex problems and assess their problem solving skill by way of model comparison with the experts.
Also, I may present this mental model comparsion approach to Dr. Ge. She and I have developed a web-based Problem Solving Support System to scaffolding ill-structured problem solving. mental model comparison may offer another creative means to measure student problem solving skill acquisition.
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