Translating education research into practice within an engineering education center: Two examples related to problem solving

This paper describes how results from the education literature have been put into practice in two projects currently underway in an engineering education center. The projects are both aimed at improving problem solving. The first is being conducted in Statics, and the second in Fluid Mechanics course in Civil Engineering. The Statics project is grounded in a model that integrates literature on problem solving, representational transformations, and prior knowledge. This model was used to analyze students' problem solving in Statics so that key difficulties could be identified. Instructional modules were then designed to address those difficulties. The design of these instructional modules served as the starting point for modules in Fluid Mechanics. The primary literature used in the development of the instructional modules focused on cognitive modeling, selfexplanation, and worked examples.