The effects and process of using different story-indexing strategies within a case library on college students' ability to solve ill-structured problems

Most students have difficulties in transferring knowledge, supports should be provided to students during problem-solving processes. Case-based reasoning suggested that learners build their own case libraries of experiences through working with "expert" experiences.; The purposes of this study are to investigate the effects and process of using different story-indexing strategies (no index, surface-indexing, and thematic indexing strategies) within a case library to support college students' abilities in solving ill structured problems and making analogies. A mixed-method design was conducted to collect data. Eighty-nine students participated in the experimental design and six subjects (3 freshmen and 3 seniors) participated in the qualitative design.; The results of the quantitative data analysis showed no significant differences in using the thematic-indexing strategy to help college students solve ill-structured problems and engage in analogical reasoning.; Three findings from the qualitative data analysis are described below: (1) In different stages of problem solving, students tend to look for stories with appropriate functions that achieve their goals; (2) Students vary the complexity of their analogies in different stages of problem solving; and (3) The complexity of students' analogies changes as they change their problem solving goals and seek for stories with different functions. Through closer analyses of the qualitative data, it indicated that students did not use the story indexes provided and they tended to look for stories that helped them achieve their problem-solving goals. That is, if they had to summarize problem issues, they looked for surface-level features in stories. If they had to engage in higher-order thinking such as justifying a decision, they looked deeper within the case library to pull out relevant stories. This suggests that pre-generated story indices need to account for more than the content of a story. They must also suggest ways that cases can be used to solve problems by analogy. Since problem solving takes on many forms, the indices may need to also describe the ways that cases can be used to make different types of analogies. Therefore, case libraries must allow students to ask questions that serve as multiple indexes and help them browse related stories when they solve problems.