Review by: Hasanbegovic, Jasmina (2004-07-22)

While an increased emphasis on problem solving and problem-based learning in the instruction design field can be recognised, insufficient advice to instructional designers to help them design and develop learning and instructional supports for every kind of problem-solving is available.

The authors present in this article the elicitation, analysis, and inclusion of stories as a primary form of instructional support while learning to solve problems. They introduce their article by explaining the origin, historical context and relevance of stories and by many studies of everyday and professional contexts they demonstrate the role of narrative as a primary medium for problem solving – especially in nonformal learning settings like the workplace. Recognizing the mismatch between the kinds of problem solving being learned in formal settings in a decontextualised and well-structured manner and the methods used to solve problems in non-formal settings, the authors introduce the use of stories as a primary instructional method. According to the lack of previous experiences by novices, experiences available through stories or a case library are expected to augment the repertoire of experiences.

After a short introduction into case based reasoning, the authors present ways of using stories to perform task analysis as well as learning support during instruction. In a next step, they describe the process of collecting stories from experienced practitioners providing relevant information that can be used for interpreting and understanding problem-solving tasks in order to design instruction. So as to analyze stories using CBR, they recommend four activities and describe two different ways of indexing stories. Afterwards they explain three different ways how the collected stories during analysis can support learning. As exemplars of concepts, principles, or theories stories can be taught by direct instruction, or they can be used as problem cases to be solved by students, or as advice for students, for helping them learn to solve problems. The latter application is explained as case-based teaching in greater detail, referring again to the case-based reasoning research findings. The authors also demonstrate the selection of stories by students and by the learning environment using a CBR algorithm and give an example for every alternative. Finally they introduce the goal-based scenario as an example of case-based teaching with an automatic CBR analysis.

As stories are very essential to solving complex, everyday and professional problems, the authors fill in the gap between theoretical approaches on problem-based learning and practical use for designing instruction by explaining the relevance of stories in the scope of case-based teaching. In a coherent manner, this article delivers insight into the very abstract world of case based reasoning and illustrates the possibilities of adopting stories in learning environments. However, more research and examples on case-based teaching are necessary to develop professional training for faculty.