Abstract
One of the challenges in implementing a Puzzle-based Learning approach is taking a love of puzzles, or a desire to make students think in a more open-ended fashion, and making it work in a classroom environment. Many courses reward students for sitting quietly and, when prompted, answering a set of well-defined questions with rehearsed answers built from what their teacher has said. When we describe an effective teaching approach to support Puzzle-based Learning, we are not just talking about buying a book or finding some problems, we are talking about a complete change in the way that many of us think about working with our students.
Puzzle-based Learning doesn’t need a lecturer, it needs a Ringmaster.
– Nick Falkner
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Notes
- 1.
Collins A, Brown JS, Newman SE (1989) Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. In: Resnick LB (ed) Knowing, learning, and instruction: essays in honor of Robert Glaser. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, pp 453–494.
- 2.
If your institution supports interdisciplinary classes we encourage you to explore that option. We have had very good experience with Puzzle-based Learning classes involving a mix of students from different majors (e.g., Information Systems, Computer Science, Psychology, Statistics, Cognitive Science, Economics, and Physics).
- 3.
Students do background reading/watching before coming to class and most of class time is spent working problems to strengthen and assess one’s understanding of the material.
- 4.
The reader is referred to Robert Abbott’s page on Eleusis http://www.logicmazes.com/games/eleusis/index.html and to the exposition of Martin Gardner Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers, Mathematical Association of America, 1997.
- 5.
In a puzzle-of-the-day context, an instructor needs to be comfortable with students reasoning out an answer before the instructor!
- 6.
In the educational context, a rubric is set of performance standards for a given assignment or course, represented as a set of guidelines to illustrate what type of performance corresponds to a particular grading level.
Reference
Collins A, Brown JS, Newman SE (1989) Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the crafts of reading, writing, and mathematics. In: Resnick LB (ed) Knowing, learning, and instruction: essays in honor of Robert Glaser. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, pp 453–494
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Meyer, E.F., Falkner, N., Sooriamurthi, R., Michalewicz, Z. (2014). Effective Teaching Approaches. In: Guide to Teaching Puzzle-based Learning. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6476-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6476-0_4
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