Explanation production by expert planners

Although the explanation capability of expert systems is usually listed as one of the distinguishing characteristics of these systems, the explanation facilities of most existing systems are quite primitive. Computer generated explanations are typically produced from canned text or by direct translation of the knowledge structures. Explanations produced in this manner bear little resemblance to those produced by humans for similar tasks. The focus of our research in explanation is the production of justifications for decisions by expert planning systems. An analysis of justifications written by people for planning tasks has been taken as the starting point. The purpose of this analysis is two-fold. First, analysis of the information content of the justifications will provide a basis for deciding what knowledge must be represented if human-like justifications are to be produced. Second, an analysis of the textual organization of the justifications will be used in the development of a mechanism for selecting and organizing the knowledge to be included in a computer-produced explanation. This paper describes a preliminary analysis done of justifications written by people for a planning task. It is clear that these justifications differ significantly from those that would be produced by an expert system by tracing the firing of production rules. The results from the text analysis have been used to develop an augmented phrase structured grammar (APSG) describing the organization of the justifications. The grammar was designed to provide a computationally feasible method for determining textual organization that will allow the necessary information to be communicated in a cohesive manner

Iterative-deepening heuristic search for optimal and semi-optimal resource allocation

It is demonstrated that when iterative-deepening A asterisk (IDA asterisk) is applied to one type of resource allocation problem, it uses far less storage than A asterisk, but opens far more nodes and thus has unacceptable time complexity. This is shown to be due, at least in part, to the low-valued effective branching factor that is a characteristic of problems with real-valued cost functions. The semi-optimal, epsilon-admissible IDA asterisk sub epsilon search algorithm that the authors described was shown to open fewer nodes than both A asterisk and IDA asterisk with storage complexity proportional to the depth of the search tree

Qualitative Research in PBL in Health Sciences Education: A Review

CONTEXT Qualitative methodologies are relatively new in health sciences education research, especially in the area of problem-based learning (PBL). A key advantage of qualitative approaches is the ability to gain in-depth, textured insights into educational phenomena. Key methodological issues arise, however, in terms of the strategies of inquiry, data collection methods, and analytical approaches. This review aims to identify and appraise the current applications of qualitative studies in PBL and indicate possible new methodological directions. METHODS Two computerized databases, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) and PubMed, were screened for solely qualitative studies of PBL in health sciences education between 2000 and 2015. Selected articles were grouped for systematic description, critical analysis, and evaluation, with a key focus on identifying methodological trends. RESULTS The number of recent qualitative research studies of PBL in health sciences education is small but growing, with 61 solely qualitative articles identified in the review period. Four main research issues in PBL were identified for qualitative investigation: (1) participants’ experiences or perceptions; (2) facilitation; (3) assessment; and (4) educational technologies. Participants’ experiences or perceptions of PBL have drawn the most research attention to date. Methodological approaches included: self-reported studies using interview data (n = 29); studies analyzing video recordings of PBL tutorials (n = 9); introspective studies analyzing written reflections (n = 6); and studies using multiple qualitative methods (n = 17). Of the 61 identified studies, the majority are perception studies, with only a limited number focused on PBL processes or interactional analyses. CONCLUSIONS This review presented and analyzed current practices in qualitative studies of PBL in health sciences education and indicated new directions. Research designs are expanding beyond an initial focus on post-hoc perception studies to explore innovative, in situ qualitative inquiries and methodologies

Guest Editors\u27 Introduction: Special Issue on Analyzing Interactions in PBL—Where to Go From Here?

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Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been deployed as a student-centered instructional approach and curriculum design in a wide range of academic fields across the world. The majority of educational research to date has focused on knowledge-based outcomes addressing why PBL is useful. Researchers of PBL are developing a growing interest in qualitative research with a process-driven orientation to examining learning interactions. It is essential to broaden this research base so as to support PBL designs and approaches to leading students into higher-order thinking and a deeper approach to learning. Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning explores how students learn in an inquiry-led approach such as PBL. Included are studies that focus on learning in situ and go beyond measuring the outcomes of PBL. The goal is to further expand the PBL research base of qualitative investigations examining the social dimension and lived experience of teaching and learning within the PBL process. A second aim of this volume is to shed light on the methodological aspects of researching PBL, adding new perspectives to the current trends in qualitative studies on PBL. Chapters cover ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Specifically, this book will further contribute to the current educational research both theoretically and empirically in the following key areas: students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts; the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials; the (inter)cultural aspects of learning in PBL; facilitation processes and group dynamics in synchronous and asynchronous face-to-face and blended PBL; and the developing nature of PBL learner identity.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_previews/1058/thumbnail.jp

Math Is in the Title (Un)Learning the Subject in Qualitative and Post Qualitative Inquiry

An ongoing experiment in (un)learning the humanist subject in qualitative and post qualitative inquiry, this writing-reading-thinking explores the tensions that two doctoral students and an assistant professor grapple with through an undirected/directed reading course and beyond. The paper takes up and troubles conventional academic writing practices that aim to present knowledge as finished and neatly packaged for consumption, pushing against the stable academic subject. We intend for the reader to experiment and play in the manuscript and to think with multiple fragments together. We hold a persistent wondering about how to teach and learn to think differently—how to ‘‘untrain’’ researchers as St. Pierre (2016b) says

Predicting and explaining the movement of mesoscale oceanographic features using CLIPS

The Naval Research Laboratory has developed an oceanographic expert system that describes the evolution of mesoscale features in the Gulf Stream region of the northwest Atlantic Ocean. These features include the Gulf Stream current and the warm and cold core eddies associated with the Gulf Stream. An explanation capability was added to the eddy prediction component of the expert system in order to allow the system to justify the reasoning process it uses to make predictions. The eddy prediction and explanation components of the system have recently been redesigned and translated from OPS83 to C and CLIPS and the new system is called WATE (Where Are Those Eddies). The new design has improved the system's readability, understandability and maintainability and will also allow the system to be incorporated into the Semi-Automated Mesoscale Analysis System which will eventually be embedded into the Navy's Tactical Environmental Support System, Third Generation, TESS(3)