Students as Expert System Developers A Means of Eliciting and Understanding Commonsense Reasoning

• Published in: Journal of research on computing in education Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 497 - 513
• Main Authors: Nancy, Law, Ogborn, Jon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.06.1994
• Subjects: Common Sense; Educational technology; Epistemology; Expert Systems; Expertise; Intuition; knowledge acquisition; Prior Learning; Programming; Secondary Education; Student Developed Materials; system design; Systems development; Thinking Skills
• ISSN: 0888-6504
• DOI: 10.1080/08886504.1994.10782106

Knowing what the learner knows is an important prerequisite for effective teaching, although what this actually entails is not necessarily self-evident. In response to the increasing recognition that intuitive knowledge gained through everyday life experience constitutes an important part of prior knowledge, ways of probing into this knowledge have been developed. Depending on the investigator's particular view of teaching and learning, the object of the enquiry may vary from identifying specific elements of the learner's knowledge to identifying patterns of reasoning to identifying general structures of cognition. The methods of inquiry used for acquiring an understanding of a learner's prior knowledge generally have been developed from one particular perspective, and they do not support explorations under alternative perspectives. This article reports on a method for exploring commonsense reasoning via engaging subjects in the development of an expert system representing their own intuitive expertise. This method provides insights into the learner's understanding from three perspectives: the learner's knowledge, patterns of reasoning, and general structures of cognition. It also provides information on how these perspectives are dynamically linked in the individual.