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Problem Solve Like an Expert

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Problem Solve Like an Expert (PSLAE) makes the problem-solving moves that scientists and engineers use every day explicit, teachable, and transferable for high school students.

Teachers lean over the railing of a sunlit, multistory campus building to release and test their designs while colleagues watch from the floor below.
Teachers test their designs during Problem Solve Like an Expert summer training at UC San Diego.

Working with San Diego Unified School District teachers, we co-developed full-year Biology, Chemistry, and Physics courses that are UC A-G approved and aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. Expert problem-solving strategies are built into the science itself rather than added on as a separate unit.

Students learn to identify the best problem to solve, brainstorm creative solutions, weigh the risks of each, and build, test, and improve their designs. These skills serve every student, whether they are heading toward a four-year STEM degree, a career technical pathway, or a field far outside science.

3

UC A-G approved courses: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics

35

problem-solving strategies students learn to choose and use

5,300+

high school students reached since 2020

7

school districts across San Diego and Imperial Counties

How Each Unit Works

Every unit is built on three anchors, so problem solving grows out of disciplinary learning and extends the storyline approach teachers already know from OpenSciEd.

1. PHENOMENON

Students encounter a real-world problem anchored in a compelling phenomenon.

2. PROBLEM

They build the science ideas they need to explain it and frame the problem worth solving.

3. PROJECT

They take on a classroom-scale version through an engineering design challenge: brainstorm, prototype, test, and iterate.

Across all three courses, students work through the PSLAE Enhanced Double Diamond, a seven-phase process that moves from discovering the problem to testing and improving a solution. Three practices run through every phase:

  • Assumptions: noticing and questioning what we take for granted about a problem
  • Obtaining and evaluating information: finding, judging, and using evidence
  • Troubleshooting: tracing what went wrong and why, then deciding what to change

Expert tools such as the fishbone diagram and the Five Whys give students concrete ways to explore a problem before they jump to a solution.

A whiteboard fishbone diagram titled Why is percent error so bad? sorts possible causes of error in a food calorimetry lab into materials, environment, equipment, people, measurements, and methods.
A fishbone diagram maps the possible causes of percent error in a calorimetry lab.

Designed With and For Teachers

District teachers wrote and revised the units, San Diego Unified led the UC A-G approval, and the UC San Diego Science Project contributed curriculum design and professional learning. Two design principles guide every course:

  • Teacher accessibility for use: one navigable unit plan linking to every lesson and slide deck, consistent lesson formats, and ready-to-use student materials
  • Educative teacher support: videos that model instructional practices, just-in-time content guidance, and anticipated student ideas
A facilitator points to a slide titled Problem Space Exploration, showing lateral thinking with a fishbone diagram and vertical thinking with the Five Whys, as teachers follow along on laptops.
Teachers practice problem space exploration strategies they will bring to their students.

Problem Solve Like an Expert courses are taught in San Diego Unified, Poway, Sweetwater, San Dieguito, Grossmont, Imperial, and Carlsbad school districts.

INSIDE A UNIT

Physics: A Problem You Can Hear and See

In one Physics unit, students use the Science of Sound and Music web applications to visualize, manipulate, and create sound, then build and test a system that produces and records sounds, coordinating wave properties, energy transfer, and engineering design.

Explore the Listening to Waves web applications

Teach Problem Solve Like an Expert

Teachers who join receive a week of summer training at UC San Diego, the full course materials, and a monthly Community of Practice, in person and online, to share what is working as they teach. More than 20 teachers took part in the 2026 summer training.

Ask About the Next Training Visit the Problem Solve Like an Expert Course Website

Partners

UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, San Diego Unified School District, and the UC San Diego Science Project at CREATE.