Concept mapping is useful to establish relationships between ideas and has been linked to 30 % improvement in student understanding

Ausubel’s assimilation theory: Meaningful learning involves changing ones current knowledge as a result of the comprehension of new knowledge

Concept: anything that can be named / perceived regularities or patterns

Proposition: an expression of the relationship between concepts

Maps: represents knowledge using diagrams that express concepts and relationships

Linking phrases: without the relations, knowledge would not “cohere”

The most important single factor influencing learning, is what the learner already knows (Ausubel, 1968)

In the process of meaningful learning, people construct meanings for concepts and propositions based on experiences, building up their knowledge structure

Meaningful learning involves changing ones current knowledge as a result of the comprehension of new knowledge

There needs to be:

• Differentiation of concepts
• Superordination of concepts under more general, more inclusive concepts
• Subsumption of new concepts into existing, more general concepts and propositions
• Integrative reconciliation to achieve coherence and consistency

Drawing a map:

• Helps the designer understand the problem
• Is a creative process (new discoveries are made as the map is drawn)
• Helps establish credibility within the team
• The map itself offers the first chance to interject the user as a guiding concept for the product

Progressive cognition (3 levels): review at a glance → readable with some attention → deeper, richer understanding can be layered in

Drawing a map:

1. Identify main concept
2. List related concepts (don’t worry about organisation, importance, completeness)
3. Draw a rough map
4. Interview team members and domain experts
5. Identify synonyms and instances (remove redundancy, cluster related concepts)
6. Redraw, redraw, redraw (each time you’ll discover new connections)
7. Get feedback from the team
8. Repeat 4-7

Maps can be redrawn and rearranged to highlight different concepts

Choose a dominant position, use a hierarchy, different colours, etc.

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“All life is problem solving” – Karl Popper

How do we get students to think like professionals in the field?
How do we foster group interaction in online spaces?
How do I assess learning in online spaces?

PBL addresses the content issue, as well as enhancing critical thinking through the collaborative solving of authentic, real-world problems

Mismatch:

• PBL → solving problems is the tool, learning is the goal
• Traditional → content is the tool, problem solving is the goal

PBL is all unstructured (but it can be scaffolded), and there’s not necessarily a right/wrong answer

Six steps to problem solving (IDEALS):

• Identify the problem (What is the real question we are facing?)
• Define the context (What are the facts that frame this problem?)
• Enumerate the choices (What are the plausible actions?)
• Analyse the options (What is the best course of action?)
• List reasons explicitly (why is this the best course of action?)
• Self-correct (What did we miss?)

The problem should be authentic and appealing (a mystery to solve)
Clearly outline expectations for each step of the process

Why move from face-to-face to online?

• In F2F, you can only move forward at the speed of the slowest learner
• Significant time requirements for F2F
• Identify…can be anonymous online → fewer preconceived biases among students

Challenges:

• How do you transition F2F to online
• What tools are appropriate / feasible / viable / affordable?
• How do you do collaborative work when everyone is online at different times?

Format:

• Cases are presented in multiple formats / media
• Introductory week to familiarise students with online environment. In addition to learning the content and critical thinking, students also have to learn about PBL
• Scenarios are released in 2 stages over a 2 week period
• Scenarios are accompanied by a set of probing questions to stimulate discussion
• Teacher provides support during the discussions
• Students must also design their own case
• Assessment is based on content and depth
• Wiki used for question / answer. Each student must answer each of the questions, each answer must be different i.e. must add to what has already been added (this means that the question can’t just be a knowledge question)
• Discussion boards are used for students to dissect the cases (All and Group)
• Each group assesses their own knowledge base, and define what the gaps are, and therefore what they need to find out (who provides the links to the resources, or can students use any resources?)
• At least 3 posts per student, including: Summarise and question one citation; Answer another students’ question; Follow up any discussion on their own posts
• Reading assignment: written, critial appraisal of a published article relevant to the case study. This summary must be posted online.

Important for students to learn how to share information in supportive environments

Assessment:

• What parts of the process need to be assessed?
• What parts can be graded as a group?
• What needs to be submitted for individual assessment?
• What are the time constraints for the grading?
• How do you balance grading workload with the need to externally motivate student performance?
• There is also a syllabus quiz to ensure the students actually know the content

Design:

• Make the problem compelling
• Outline expectations
• The problem analysis should relate to the professoinal field
• As student proficiency develops, withdraw support
• Use learning issues to encourage EBP
• Ensure that solution development is based on critical appraisal

Resources

• Barrows, HS (1996). Problem based learning in medicine and beyond: a brief overview. New directions for teaching and learning
• Barrows HS & Tamblyn, RM (1980). Problem based learning: an approach to medicla education. New York, Springer Pub. Co.
• Hmelo-Silver, C (2004). Problem based learning: what and how do students learn? Educational Psychology Review, 16(3)
• www.criticalthinking.org

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Concept map about concept mapping taken from IHMC website

I just finished giving feedback to my students on the concept mapping assignment they’re busy with. It’s the first time I’ve used concept mapping in an assignment and in addition to the students’ learning, I’m also  trying to see if it helps me figure out what they really understand about applying the theory we cover in class to clinical contexts. They’re really struggling with what seem to be basic ideas, highlighting the fact that maybe the ideas aren’t so basic after all. I have to remind myself that clinical reasoning is a skill that takes many years to develop through reflection and isn’t really something I can “teach”. Or is it?

For this assignment I wanted the the students to set a learning objective for themselves (I gave examples of how to do this, including using SMART principles of goal setting). They also needed to highlight a particular clinical problem that they wanted to explore and how they would use concepts from the Movement Science module to do this. They needed to describe a clinical scenario / patient presentation and use it to identify the problem they wanted to explore. From that short presentation, they should derive a list of keywords that would become the main concepts for the concept map.

Here’s a list of the most common problems I found after reviewing their initial drafts:

• Many of them lacked alignment between the patient presentation, the learning objective, keyword / propositions and the final concept map
• Many of the learning objectives were vague. They really found it hard to design appropriate learning objectives, which meant that their whole assignment was muddled
• There were two processes going on in the students’ minds: patient management, and their own learning. This assignment was about student learning, but most of the students were focused on patient management. This was especially clear in the learning objective and actual maps they created, which all had a clinical focus on the interventions they would use to treat the patient, rather than the learning concepts they would apply
• Most of the students created hierarchical maps which failed to identify complex relationships between concepts

After going through their initial drafts, I had another session with them to go through the feedback I’d given and providing more examples of what I expected from them. This assignment is proving far more difficult for the students than I’d expected. However, I’m not sure if it’s because they can’t apply theoretical concepts to clinical scenarios, or if they just don’t have a good understanding of how to create concept maps. I think that they’re having difficulty thinking in terms of relationships between concepts. The maps they’ve been drawing are appropriate in terms of the interventions they’d choose to manage their patients, but the students can’t seem to transfer the concepts from the classroom into clinical contexts.

They’re used to memorising the content because that’s how we assess them i.e. our assessments are knowledge-based. Then they go into clinical contexts and almost have to re-learn the theory again in the clinical environment. There doesn’t seem to be much transfer going on, in terms of moving knowledge from the classroom context to the clinical one. I haven’t researched this yet, but I wonder what sort of graduate we’d get if we scrapped classroom teaching altogether and just did everything on the wards and in the clinics? I understand the logistical issues of an apprentice-based approach to teaching large groups but if we didn’t have classroom time at all, maybe it’d be possible?

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The content of the course is aimed at new lecturers or those with experience who’d like to explore new ideas in their teaching practices. I thought it’d be interesting to engage with people from other institutions and see what I could learn from them. The sessions are really short so there isn’t much time to cover a lot of ground. However, the interaction seemed pretty good today. Most of the notes below were thoughts I had that were inspired by what was said, and not really content from the session.

What do teachers and students do to create learning spaces?

Students’ learning behaviour is a response to the education system they’re a part of

Perceived relevance influences participation (it’s not necessarily about actual relevance)

Challenging boundaries can develop critical thinking

Definitions of learning are context dependent i.e. it’s hard to pin down a definition of what it means “to learn”. Remembering a fact is different to more efficiently performing a task, but both are “learning”

Bloom’s taxonomy implies that certain “types” of learning are more developed than others, but “Evaluation” can be done at a basic level, and “Remembering” can be complex

How do you enable self-expression as a means of developing creativity / engagement?

When we mediate teaching and learning experiences with technology, are we producing a fundamentally different thinking process? If we are, then “e-learning” isn’t just about using technology…then it really is something different that should stand alone

How does “what students do” impact on how they think? How can I make better use of our learning spaces to change students’ thinking?

How do you get students to prepare for class, engage during class, and follow up (reflect) after class, in order to reach specific learning objectives?

If you give homework, do you need to make sure that students do it? If the homework task is designed to develop thinking, and then you assess the students’ ability to think, doing the homework task stops being work for the sake of work. Completing the homework then has a real positive outcome in terms of facilitating deeper understanding, which increases the probability of the student being deemed “competent”, which makes them more likely to do the homework.

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Concept Mapping in a Movement Science physiotherapy module

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