SCXT 350
An exercise in Expertise
Due: Friday, April 16 (in class)
An exercise from Cathy Hale for groups of about five.
Find an expert in your group. The criterion is that the person knows more about something than the average person does. The area of expertise can be anything, e.g., music, baseball, history, trivia, dinosaurs, dancing. Next, identify a novice in the same area. Through questions and conversation with these individuals, identify the characteristics and principles that seem to distinguish between your novice and expert.
Questions or areas to explore:
1. Does the expertise seem to be domain-specific? Does the expert know more about many things than the novice does or is the expertise limited to one area?
2. Present the novice and the expert with a problem in the expert's area. How do they differ in how they represent or approach the problem, how they use strategies to solve the problem, and at what level they process the problem? How do they decide that they have reached a solution (the goal state)?
3. Does your expert's abilities seem to be due to structural (built-in or innate) differences? Could the novice become the expert? Is it sufficient to familiarize the novice with the area? What else is needed for expertise besides familiarity?
Please report on the discussion with particular attention paid to examples and responses to the three questions in the handout.