Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The design and architecture of two user-controlled, computer-based problemanalysis environments in classical mechanics are discussed. In theexpert-like environment, the user analyzes problems according to ahierarchical concept schema consistent with how experts analyze novel problemsin physics. In the second environment, the user searches a large equationdata-base utilizing novice-like, surface feature keywords in order to locatethe appropriate equation(s) to use in solving a problem. Cognitive andpedagogical implications of the research are discussed.