This study investigated the mental representations of student and professional engineers while they solved an engineering design problem. The intent was to gain a deeper insight into the differences that exist in the cognitive processes of engineering students and professional engineers as they use mental representations (i.e., propositions,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate novices learning to use a mission planning system. Novice participants received one training session, followed by three test sessions. This was compared to expert performance. During the test sessions, all participants were required to "think aloud", based on Ericsson and Simon's (Ericsson, K.A. and…

Analyses of the cognitive activity displayed by students on existing innovative assessments in science were conducted. The project has worked with pilot alternative assessment programs in Connecticut and California to document the match or mismatch between the skills and processes that the assessment is designed to tap and those actually elicited.…