• Work on a specific problem
• Problems must be short
• Individual problems must not require much detail
• Presentation:
  • Distill what's important
  • Communicating it to others
  • Presentations repeat common themes often
• Generalizing the process of solving that problem
  • What is portable to different problems?
• Synthesize problems as a group
  • Group brainstorming
  • What are the good nuggets?
  • Sensemaking
• Current epistemological stance:
  • Do many examples of the same thing
  • Student request: “do examples that are not in the book”

Liz's cm capstone is a counterexample. There, the problems are long with much detail. She uses the inverse compare and contrast. Many techniques looking at the same problem (pendulum) using this example as a framework for students to compare and contrast techniques.

• Strong content goals
• Often a chance to examine special cases
• Thinking Processes:
  • Students practice drawing inferences
  • Students practice recognizing patterns
  • Professor models asking professional questions
  • Query students expectations vs. look at implications for earlier things.
  • Changing epistemology
• Looking at characteristics of physical things:
  • multiple representations
  • chunking
  • What kind of a beast is it?
  • refining resources