A Learning Model Based on a Didactic Cognitive Approach: The Case of Single-Degree-of- Freedom Systems ANA LILIA LAUREANO-CRUCES, 1 AMADOR TERA ´ N-GILMORE, 2 FERNANDO DE ARRIAGA 3 1 Departamento de Sistemas, Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana, Azcapotzalco, Mexico 2 Departamento de Materiales, Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana, Azcapotzalco, Mexico 3 Departamento de Matema´tica Aplicada, UniversidadPolite´cnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Received 1 September 2003; accepted 8 March 2004 ABSTRACT: Aiding the acquisition of cognitive abilities is an important issue within the teachinglearning process. The student should not only control his/her own learning process, but also the way he/she does it. One of the new developments in education, focused on achieving those goals, is the use of tools, models, and techniques derived from cognitive psychology to improve the design of course ‘‘curricula’’ within a specific knowledge domain. The paper presents a learning model that focuses on a specific topic, and uses a cognitive approach for building human expert mental models and schemes, partially based on the con- cepts of Forbus’ qualitative theory. Regarding the didactic approach, the authors’ experience is taken into account within a ‘‘student centered’’ learning approach, in which training or learning systems have a great significance. All these elements are integrated in the formulation of an intelligent learning prototype, now under construction, that fosters a qualitative under- standing of the domain, before the quantitative part is dealt with. The selected domain is a specific topic of structural dynamics known as single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems. ß 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 12: 152164, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20013 Correspondence to A. L. Laureano-Cruces (clc@correo.azc. uam.mx). Partially sponsored by the Consejo Superior de Ciencia y Tecnologı ´a (SEP-CONACYT) under grant number 39970-H. ß 2004 Wiley Periodicals Inc. 152