ABSTRACT
We have been developing and testing a set of undergraduate curriculum to teach cognitive science [1]. Here we report one particular case of our approach where students learned some basic constructs of human memory. Students gradually integrated pieces of research findings on the “semantic net representation” by the “jigsaw” method, by tying the understanding to their previous experience of analyzing data from classic psychology experiment [2][3]. Learning through collaborative reflection enabled them to clearly understand the reasons why people remember semantic aspects of sentences better than their superficial features and the significance of the results when they were to apply it in real-world problem solving. Students also gained meta-cognitive experiences of becoming an expert on a piece of literature assigned to them and of actively grasping its main points. These experiences provided the students with the base to engage in more rigorous constructive interaction in the latter phase of the curriculum.
