Landamatics Blueprint: Guided Discovery
By Ying Xie & Joel Pheasant
Content Area:
Cardiovascular System--The Heart—Electrocardiogram
Audience:
Non-science major college students
Objective:
Students will distinguish heart irregularity from an electrocardiogram.
General algorithm:
Please refer to Appendix.
Steps:
Step 1: Guide the students to discover a system of mental operations underlying a general method of thinking.
Pedagogical actions:
Ask the students what they would do in their heads in order to determine, on the basis of the definition, whether the electrocardiogram displays a healthy heart.
Step 2: Help the student to become aware of what they did in their minds when performing the task and then to formulate a method that corresponds to it.
Pedagogical actions:
Ask the students to formulate a detailed set of instructions and write them down. This set of instructions should tell a person, who does not know how to use the definition of a electrocardiogram of a healthy heart, should do in his or her mind in order to determine if the given electrocardiogram is of a healthy heart or not. If the student is able to formulate the instructions correctly, move on to the next step. If not, explain to them how to formulate the instructions.
Step 3: Help the student to apply the discovered method.
Pedagogical actions:
Tell the students that the task now is to practice applying the written-down instructions for recognizing a healthy heart from among non-healthy hearts based upon the EKG. Show them the various EKGs and have them determine, following the method, which of them are from healthy hearts and which are not. Explain that they should use the method in a step-by-step manner.
Step 4: Help the student to internalize the method.
Pedagogical actions:
Ask the students to put aside the written instructions and show them another set of EKGs. Tell them to find out the healthy hearts from the EKGs by using self-instructions. If students fail to accomplish this task, then loop back to Step 4.
Step 5: Help the student to automatize the method.
Pedagogical actions:
Tell students to “forget about” their self-instructions and show them more EKGs. Ask them to find the healthy hearts as quickly as possible.
Step 6: Increase the degree of generality.
Pedagogical actions:
Show them the generalized algorithm of classification. Tell them to find whether a person’s heart is healthy or not by reading its EKG is far more complicated and of subtler differences. However, by using the generalized algorithm, students can add more conditions/features and can still successfully determine the healthiness of a heart.
Appendix: Algorithms