Currie's Corner

Photo of Cathie M. Currie Ph.D.April 2011

Cathie M. Currie  

Cathie M. Currie, Ph.D. is a cognitive social psychologist who specializes in medical and science education. She heavily engaged with problem solving and innovation thinking skills, authentic assessment, and minority access to higher education. She is also an Advisor to Altshuller Institute.

In an attempt to understand how to better teach TRIZ, Dr. Currie has written and article to explain, in simple terms, the various methods of how people learn. Dr. Currie contends that tinkering, a cherished hobby of yesteryear, has reemerged as a novel catalyst for student engagement and higher-level thinking in thousands of school classrooms and after-school programs across our country. We can intuitively perceive that tinkering stimulates active participation in learning. However, educators need to know how cognitive and educative gains are produced in tinkering experiences to allow us to maximally develop the educative experience.

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Currie's Corner

Photo of Cathie M. Currie, Ph.D.May 2010

Cathie M. Currie, Ph.D., Adelphi University and Advisor to The Altshuller Institute and Richard Langevin, Executive Director, The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies

TRIZ Takes Case-Based Instruction to a Higher Level

Policy makers and educators assume that improvement in student learning and instruction requires a lengthy, slow, and detailed process. We need to challenge that assumption. The immediacy of recognizing and gathering information and making critical judgment calls induced by realistic problem scenarios can stimulate students to learn rapidly, efficiently, and effectively. And the additional benefit of the students’ heightened sense of achievement brought about by richly-detailed ‘rush of learning’ experiences may be much more valuable than the content they learn.

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