At the start of the semester, your students are novices at solving the kinds of problems they will study in your course. Research on problem solving shows that novices approach problems very differently than experts. Experts take more time at the start of working on a problem to think about and understand the problem itself, the bigger picture surrounding the problem, possible solution approaches and approximations, and finally they lay out a solution strategy. Novices tend to focus on specific details and jump in and start trying something.

As faculty here are some ideas to consider to help your students move towards more expert-like problem solving:

• Explain your reasoning, especially at the start of the example. Even if it seems redundant.  Don’t just start solving.
• Write homework assignments with added question parts that guide students into the thinking that goes into starting a problem. When students seek help, especially from peers, they may otherwise skip this initial thinking process as the peer will start helping from already having identified the solution approach. Explicitly asking the thinking questions brings student focus back to the thought process of starting the problem.
• Encourage TAs to ask their students to explicitly think about and discuss how to start problems in section and in office hours. It can be very effective in section for students to start the hardest homework problem in groups by discussing guided questions on how to start the problem.