Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The constructivist paradigm, which views learning as an active process in which students participate by engaging in activities that facilitate the construction of internal representations, is fast gaining currency as an innovative and effective way to overhaul classroom instruction. One way to promote constructivist learning is to firmly embed the acquisition of knowledge in realistic and stimulating contexts that challenge students to explore a variety of issues and employ a variety of their skills. This symposium will focus on four approaches (anchored instruction, casebased reasoning, goal-based scenarios, and problembased learning) designed to contextualize learning in this fashion. They do so in different, yet related ways. Examples of these approaches, ways in which they are similar and different, and important concerns regarding their effects on student learning and performance will be some of the issues that panelists will address. The panelists in this symposium are: Ray Bareiss, Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University; Cindy Hmelo, Janet Kolodner, and Hari Narayanan, EduTech Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology; Vimla Patel, Center for Cognitive Science, McGill University; and Susan Williams. School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University.