Expert: An advanced problem solver, typically a physics professor or graduate student. Experts
use higopposed to the novice.her order skills in solving problems and look more at a problem's conceptual basis as
Face-to-face Interaction: One of the five elements of cooperative learning. Face-to-face
Interaction promotes students' support for one another to learn. It is necessary to have a
classroom where students can physically face each other.
Force-vector Diall the forces actingagram at a point or on an object. : A diagram that follows the drawingThe vectors are usually of a free-body resolved into components diagram and shows
on a Cartesian coordinate system.
Free-body diagram: A diagram showing all the forces acting on an isolated body. Free-body
diagrams are essential to solving any physics problem involving forces and interactions.
involves an evaluation byGroup Processing: One of the five elements of the participants of their gcooperative learningroup: What they did well and what they. Group Processing^
could do better the next time to improve the functioning of the group.
Heuristic: A usually speculative formulation serving as a guide in the investigation or solution
of a problem; an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result
appropriate solution of sefrom investigations made byveral found by the student; a pr alternative oblem-solvingmethods is selected at technique in which the most successive stages of a
program or strategy for use in the next step of the program or strategy.
Individual Accountability: One of the five elements of cooperative learning. Individual
Accountability requires the instructor to assess each person's performance by asking questions
randomly of individuals and giving examinations.
Information processing model: A model of human reasoning and problem solving that likens
the mind to a computer that processes inputs and outputs.
Interaction: Any verbal, written, or non-verbal exchange between any two people in a group.
Joint construction: Students jointly create an argument or a problem solution, for example, by
systematically arranging ideas or concepts.
Novice: A beginning problem solver who focused on surface features of a problem and
frequently utilizes a formulaic approach to problem solving.