multifaceted problems during their recitation session where approximately 20 students meet with their teaching assistant (TA). The TA’s role was to provide guided instruction on problem-solving strategies, e.g., how to qualitatively analyze the problems, how to work from concepts and diagrams to build a solution. We trained the TA's how to use leading prompts in all their discussions with students. At the start of the semester, this was a challenge for the TAs because their inclination is to provide more direct help, for example, to make a suggestion of an approach or to identify the key constraint in a problem. We trained the TAs how to scaffold: to ask prompts[74] that support the students in the early stages of the semester; such as What information is missing? How are … related to each other? What do you think are the primary factors of this problem? Why is it …? Please explain.
During the semester groups of students worked on six multifaceted problems; two in thermodynamics, one in waves, two in magnetism and magnetic induction, and one on optics. The problem statements for these six problems are given in Appendix. Twice during the semester student groups also solved a multifaceted problem during a group exam. Their exam work was evaluated based on the problem-solving approaches that they used, e.g., performing a qualitative analysis, rerepresenting the problem with a diagram, their description of ongoing monitoring of the progress of the