Problems of Learning in Theoretical Computer Science

Abstract

In today's "Information society," the future of economic well-being rests on the effectiveness of schools and corporations to empower their people to be more effective learners and knowledge creators Joseph D. Novak Understanding the processes that takes place inside the human mind-while it is thinking and learning-has remained an elusive exercise mostly because of lack of powerful research tools and techniques. Now because of recent advances in various branches of science dealing with mind and brain, it has become possible to better understand the processes of thinking and learning, and the capacity to create new knowledge. For example research from cognitive psychology has considerably increased our understanding of the principles of knowledge organization that govern people's abilities to learn, understand and create new knowledge. It is perhaps the right time to apply these developments in the study of learning to help people to think and read critically, to express themselves clearly and persuasively, and to solve complex problems. In this tutorial we would first be studying and then applying tools and techniques of science of learning to determine which problems are hard to understand in the field of Theoretical Computer Science. We shall also try to find why a problem is hard and why most of the learners fail to solve it in spite of the fact that they have all the prerequisite knowledge as well as the motivation to do it.