A learning model based on a didactic cognitive approach: The case of single‐degree‐of‐freedom systems

Abstract

Aiding the acquisition of cognitive abilities is an important issue within the teachingÀlearning process. The student should not only control his/her own learning process, but also the way he/she does it. One of the new developments in education, focused on achieving those goals, is the use of tools, models, and techniques derived from cognitive psychology to improve the design of course ''curricula'' within a specific knowledge domain. The paper presents a learning model that focuses on a specific topic, and uses a cognitive approach for building human expert mental models and schemes, partially based on the concepts of Forbus' qualitative theory. Regarding the didactic approach, the authors' experience is taken into account within a ''student centered'' learning approach, in which training or learning systems have a great significance. All these elements are integrated in the formulation of an intelligent learning prototype, now under construction, that fosters a qualitative understanding of the domain, before the quantitative part is dealt with. The selected domain is a specific topic of structural dynamics known as single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems.

The Ways of Thinking in a Sample of the Student Community of the Subjects of Structured Programming and Numerical Methods in Engineering of the UAM-Azcapotzalco within the Emerging Remote Teaching Project (PEER)

“…The teaching-learning process that includes the student's way of thinking is represented by a causal matrix, where the elements that intervene are: Interest These elements make up the concepts involved in student behavior during the teaching-learning process. The causal matrix [14] [15] [16] [17] represents the causal relationships between the concepts, in order to relate the causalities between the components that make up a cognitive system. The causal relationships are diffuse, and it is possible to encode them with values within the range [0, 1], the 0 represents that there is no causality relationship, in the case of the value 1 it represents maximum causality.…”