How Experts Differ from Novices

1. How Experts Differ from Novices Melissa Eubank

2. How Experts Differ form Novices • When it comes to problem solving, experts have gained a lot of knowledge that affects what they notice. • This knowledge also affects how they organize, represent, and interpret information.

3. How Experts Differ from Novices • 6 Principles of Expertise • Meaningful Patterns of information • Organization of Knowledge • Context and Access to Knowledge • Fluent Retrieval • Experts and Teaching • Adaptive Expertise

4. Meaningful Patterns of Information • “Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.” • Experience is Key • Chunking • Examples: • Chess • Electronics Technicians • Physicists • Teachers

5. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Experience • Experts have seen the problem before, therefore they can see patterns of meaningful information. • The problem is not really a “problem”. • Because they can see the patterns of meaningful information experts problem solving starts at a “higher level”.

6. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Chunking • Put together information into familiar patterns. • Chunking enhances short term memory. • Example: • 01110001110100101

7. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Chess: Masters vs. Lesser ranked chess players. • Chess masters were able to out play their opponents because if the knowledge they acquired from hours upon hours of playing chess. • Chess masters experiences lead to recognition of meaningful chess configurations (using chunking) which leads to the realization of the best strategy with the most superior moves to win based on these configurations. • Chess masters can chunk together chess pieces in a configuration.

8. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Electronics Technicians. • Expert electronics technicians were able to reproduce large portions of complex circuit diagrams after only a few SECONDS of viewing. • Chunked several individual circuit elements that performed the function of an amplifier. • Novices could not do this. • Being a novice in this area I hardly understand the words!!

9. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Physicists • Mathematical Experts • Recognize problems of river currents and problems of headwinds and tailwinds in airplanes to all involve relative velocities. • They chunked all of these into relative velocity problems. Only an expert physicist would be able to do that with expert mathematical skills would be able to do that.

10. Meaningful Patterns of Information • Teachers • Expert and Novice teachers were shown a videotaped classroom lesson and asked to talk about what they were seeing. • Expert teachers noticed: • Note-taking strategies of students. • Students loosing interest in the lesson. • That the students seem to be accelerated learners. • Novice teachers: • Couldn’t tell what students were doing. • Couldn’t understand what was going on. • Said “It’s a lot to watch.”

11. Organization of Knowledge • “Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject matter.” • Big Ideas guide expert thinking. • Experts understand the problem vs. novices who just want to solve the problem. • Examples: • Physics • Mathematics • Adults and Children

12. Organization of Knowledge • “Big Ideas” • Experts knowledge is organized around core concepts that guide their thinking about their domains. • Novices are more likely to approach problems by searching for the correct formulas. Their knowledge is simply a list of facts and formulas that are relevant to the domain.

13. Organization of Knowledge • Understanding the problem. • Experts want to understand what the problem means rather than just plug in numbers in a formula to get an answer. • By understanding the problem experts can then explain why they used the tactics they did to solve the problem.

14. Organization of Knowledge • Physics • Experts: • Use the core concept if Newton’s 2nd Law. The sum of the external forces equals the mass multiplied by the acceleration. F=Ma. • Draw Free Body Diagrams in order to see all the external forces and get a generic formula for solving the problem. • When looking at different problems experts group these problems based on the major principle that could be applied to solve. • Novices: • Immediately plug in numbers into formulas. • Memorize, recall and manipulate to get answers they need. • Grouped problems together based on if the pictures looked similar.

15. Organization of Knowledge • Mathematics • Experts want to understand the problem and not just plug in numbers like novices. • Experts and Novices were asked to solve an algebra word problem that is logically impossible. • Experts wanting to understand the problem quickly realized that it was logically impossible • Novices used the numbers in the problem to plug into equations that they would use to solve it, getting an unrealistic answer.

16. Organization of Knowledge • Adults (Experts) vs. Children (Novices) • Adults and children were asked: • There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain? • Adults had enough expertise to realize that you do not have enough information to solve this problem. • Children attempted to answer this question with a number by adding, subtracting, etc. They did not try to understand the problem.

17. Context and Access to Knowledge • “Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to isolated facts or propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability: that is, the knowledge is “conditionalized” on a set of circumstances.” • Retrieving relevant knowledge • “Conditionalized” • Examples: • Textbooks • Word Problems • Tests

18. Context and Access to Knowledge • Retrieving relevant knowledge. • Experts know A LOT. But when they need to solve a certain problem they don’t need all of the information they know. • Experts do not search through all the knowledge they know. This would be overwhelming. Experts selectively retrieve the relevant information they need. • Experts are GOOD at retrieving the relevant knowledge they need to solve a problem.

19. Context and Access to Knowledge • Conditionalized Knowledge • “Conditionalized”- Knowledge includes a specification of the contexts in which it is useful. • In other words, experts know when their knowledge is useful. • Knowledge must be conditionalized in order to be retrieved when it is needed. • Have to know when your knowledge is useful in order to retrieve that knowledge when it is needed to solve a problem.

20. Context and Access to Knowledge • Textbooks • DO NOT help students to conditionalize their knowledge. They teach laws of mathematics but not when these laws are useful for problem solving. • Students have to learn when their knowledge is useful all on their own. • Present facts and formulas, but not the conditions in which these facts and formulas are useful.

21. Context and Access to Knowledge • Word Problems • Word problems that use the appropriate facts and formulas help students to know when, where and why to use the knowledge they are learning. • Example: Addition and Subtraction. • If you have 2 apples and your friend Julie gives you 7 more but then Charlie eats 3 of your apples. How many apples do you have? • Children might know how to add and subtract numbers but the word problem will help them to know when their knowledge is useful.

22. Context and Access to Knowledge • Tests • Many ask for only facts and not when, where or why to use those facts. • Some tests have questions that are in order of how students learned them from the book. • Therefore students think that they have conditionalized their knowledge but they have really memorized in order of the book when to use which formulas and not learned when the formulas are actually useful. • If these same students were to take another test with questions presented randomly with no hint as to where the formulas were in the book they would not do as well.

23. Context and Access to Knowledge • What knowledge do you have that you know exactly when it is useful? • For example: I know how to take derivatives and velocity is the derivative of position. So if I am presented a velocity vs. time graph all I have to do to find the position at a given time is to find the area under the curve.

24. Fluent Retrieval • “Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.” • Effortful • Relatively effortless to automatic • Leads to progression • Example: • Driving a car • Reading

25. Fluent Retrieval • Effortful • Novices • Places demands on the learner’s attention. • Attention is being expended on remembering instead of learning. • If a student is trying to learn algebra and they are not an expert in addition, then they will be giving attention to the addition instead of learning algebra.

26. Fluent Retrieval • Effortless to Automatic • Experts • Fluency places fewer demands on their conscious attention. • Allows more capacity of attention on another task. • Like the example before, now, if the student can retrieve information on how to add effortlessly or automatically they can focus more on learning how to solve algebraic equations. • Doesn’t mean that experts solve problems faster than novices. Sometimes they can take longer because they are attempting to deeply understand the problem.

27. Fluent Retrieval • Driving a car. • At first everyone starts out as Novices and they have to consciously think about all of the moves that are associated with driving. • Checking mirrors. • Checking speed. • Radius of turn. • How hard to apply brakes and gas. • Which peddles are the brakes and gas. • Turning on your blinker when turning. • After experience however all of this becomes automatic unconscious thought. • People can drive while carrying on a conversation. • Sometimes I drive from one destination to another and don’t even remember how they got there.

28. Fluent Retrieval • Progression • Fluent retrieval is very important so that solutions can be easily retrieved from memory and you can continuously progress onto higher learning.

29. Fluent Retrieval • Reading • When someone starts out learning to read they have to sound out the words, usually syllable by syllable. It is really hard to focus your attention on the actual material you are reading when you have to focus on the words. • After experience, reading becomes automatic unconscious thought and the reader focuses on what they are actually reading.

30. Fluent Retrieval • What knowledge do you find: • Effortful? • Effortless? • Automatic?

31. Experts and Teaching • “Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others.” • Expertise in a particular domain • Expert teachers • Examples: • Hamlet • My 9th grade Biology Teacher

32. Experts and Teaching • Expertise in a particular domain. • Does not guarantee that they will be good at helping other people learn. • Can sometimes hurt teaching because experts can forget what is easy and difficult for students to learn. To them it all seems easy. • If they don’t have pedagogical content knowledge then they are more likely to rely on their textbook for how to teach their students. • The textbook doesn’t know anything about their particular classroom. • Class could have different prior knowledge and not on the same level that the book expects.

33. Experts and Teaching • Expert Teachers • Know the difficulties that students are likely to face when learning. • Good at knowing what existing knowledge their students have so that they can make new information meaningful. • Also good at assessing their students’ progress. • Have pedagogical content knowledge not just their content knowledge. • Underlies effective teaching.

34. Experts and Teaching • Hamlet • Teacher 1: • Couldn’t get into the mind set of his students. • Made them memorize long-passages, do in-depth analyses of soliloquies and write a paper on the importance of language in Hamlet. (This sounds really boring to me!) • Knew all about Hamlet, but not how to teach it to his students. • Teacher 2: • Knew how to get into his students heads. • Knew all about Hamlet too, but also how to teach students. • Asked them questions about life situations that pertained to Hamlet before even talking about the play. • Asked about how the students would feel about their parents splitting due to a new man in moms life and that man might be responsible for dads death. Then to think about what would cause them to go mad and commit murder. • This got the students attention and then they were interested in Hamlet.

35. Experts and Teaching • Ms. Yin • Brilliant in the field of Biology • Horrible teacher

36. Adaptive Expertise • “Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new situations.” • Artisans • Virtuosos • Metacognition • Answer-filled Experts • Accomplished Novices • Examples: • Japanese sushi experts • Information systems designers

37. Adaptive Expertise • Artisans • “merely skilled” • Relatively routinized

38. Adaptive Expertise • Virtuosos • “highly competent” • One that is flexible and more adaptable. • Learn throughout their lifetime. • Not only use what they have learned but are metacognitive and continuously question their current levels of expertise and attempt to move beyond them. • But which learning experiences lead develop virtuosos. • Still challenges people.

39. Adaptive Expertise • Metacognition • The ability to monitor one’s current level of understanding and decide when it is not adequate. • When there are limit’s of one’s current knowledge, you must take the right steps to remedy the situation. Learn more.

40. Adaptive Expertise • Answer filled experts • A common assumption is that and expert is someone who knows all the answers. • This puts restraint on new learning because experts worry about looking incompetent when they might need help in certain areas. • They want to be called Accomplished Novices.

41. Adaptive Expertise • Accomplished Novices • Skilled in many areas and proud of their accomplishments, but they realize that they do not know everything. They do not know everything especially when compared to all that is potentially knowable. • Experts being called accomplished novices helps people feel free to continue to learn.

42. Artisan Excels in following a fixed recipe. Virtuoso Can prepare sushi creatively. Adaptive ExpertiseJapanese sushi experts • Both can make great sushi but how they are prepared is different.

43. Adaptive ExpertiseInformation systems designers • Work with clients who know what they want. • Artisans • Skilled • Use their existing expertise to do familiar tasks more efficiantly. • Tend to accept the problem and its limits as stated by their clients. • Virtuosos • Creative • View assignments as opportunities to explore and expand their current level of expertise. • Consider the client’s statement of the problem a point for further exploration.

44. Experts vs. Novices • The six principles of expertise need to be considered simultaneously, as parts of an overall system.

45. Experts vs. Novices • A=28 degrees • Find all other angles. • Principles of expertise? • Are you an expert?

46. Experts vs. Novices • A 20-kg mass is attached to a spring with stiffness 200 N/m. The damping constant for the system is 140 N-sec/m. If the mass is pulled 25 cm to the right of equilibrium and given an initial leftward velocity of 1 m/sec, when will it first return to its equilibrium position? • What expertise do you need to solve this? • If you have that expertise, what principles of expertise are applied? • Are you an expert or a novice?

47. Experts vs. Novices • Acceleration of 3-kg mass problem (on hand out). • What expertise? • What principles of expertise? • Expert or Novice?

48. Experts vs. Novices • A board was sawed into two pieces. One piece was two-thirds as long as the whole board and was exceeded in length by the second piece by four feet. How long was the board before it was cut? • Principles of Expertise?

49. Experts vs. Novices • Puzzle: • 5 years ago Kate was 5 times as old as her Son. 5 years hence her age will be 8 less than three times the corresponding age of her Son. Find their ages. • What expertise? • Principles of expertise? • Expert?

50. Experts vs. Novices • First draw a table like this one below:5 YRS AGO PRESENT 5 YRS LATER KATE 5x 5x + 5 5x + 10 SON x x + 5 x + 10Now we know that 5 years from now Kate's age will be 8 less than three times the corresponding age of her Son. So, if we add 8 to Kate's age , 5 years from now, and make her Son's age 3 times more we will find out 'x' and PROBLEM SOLVED. Therefore:5x + 10 + 8 = 3(x + 10)5x + 18 = 3x + 305x - 3x = 30 - 182x = 12x = 12 / 2x = 6Now Kate's Present age is 5x + 5=5(6) + 5= 30 + 5= 35 YEARS Now her Son's Present age is x + 5= 6 + 5= 11 YEARS