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>> I just want for us to talk a little bit about the experiences
that we have with our students in the class
and what we think really is the biggest challenge.
And, you know, the biggest challenge as far as,
as far as instruction is concerned,
especially if we think about what our current breed
of current students really are, very technology oriented.
One big, 1 really huge challenge that the current breed
of students that we have are facing,
which is a huge distraction in terms of everything
that they are trying to do, is lack of focus.
They just, it's so hard to get them to focus.
How can we as professors help them to actually get focus
as far as what we're teaching is concerned?
And so that's how I got into, okay, so big idea, big idea,
big idea, small idea, small, small, small, smallest,
then get everything that they need.
And, you know, in direct relationship to that,
I always thought about "Well, in my classroom, here is what it is
that I really want to have them capture, the 1 idea that I'd
like them to be able to capture in this class, and what's in it
for them regarding that 1 idea."
So I would collapse my learning outcomes or learning objectives
for the course and just tell them, you know,
by the end of this semester, at the completion of this course,
you should, at least, be able to do this.
So that then everything else will crop from that.
Then I would then explain how, you know,
this sub learning outcomes are connected
to that huge overarching learning outcome.
As you prepare to teach your courses, what is the 1 big,
what is the 1 big idea?
What is the 1 big concept you'd like your students to, at least,
by the completion of the, of the course,
by the time they've completed the course would,
you know, would have?
Something they'll take from your class
from an overarching stance?
>> The languages are interested in modern languages.
>> Right.
>> In what you know whatever it French, Russian, that the fact
that you speak English as now when you're
through with us you will hopefully to same ideas
to someone who speaks Russian, to someone who speaks French,
to someone who speaks Chinese.
>> What give us has society?
I mean that.
That exactly.
So it's how do you move from point A to point B?
Okay, from point A to point B, where you're over here
and you want to get here with a variety
of people coming different cultures.
I'm from Kenya originally, so I speak Swahili, and I speak Luo,
and, then, I speak English.
I, at least I know I speak English.
[ Laughter ]
Someone else?
>> To understand how science works, to come to explanations.
>> Uh huh, Uh huh.
So how do they get from the point of view of, okay, it's,
I'm getting into a biology class and then from biology
to understanding science.
It's in short, making those connections.
Starting from the big ideas into the small ideas so that
at the end of the, you know, the course,
at the end of the program,
at the end of that educational experience, they're able
to see what they learned in a variety of ways
and not just from a big idea.
But they can be able to see the connections between that
and other things that are related to it.
The session objectives for today is we're going to look at,
what really concept maps are.
What do they mean?
And then secondly, we'll look at some of the, you know,
historical and theoretical entertainings.
I will look at the, you know, parts of a concept,
you know, concept map.
We'll look at how they can be helpful in terms of assessment.
We'll look at some of the examples from the,
you know, different areas.
We will look at research that actually shows
that concept maps can be very helpful in terms
of enhancing students learning in any discipline.
And then, finally, we'll look at some of the tools
that are available which are actually free of charge.
All the ones that I'm going
to show you today are free of charge.
They are readily available online.
So concept map, the idea came from Novak,
Joseph Novak, out of Cornell.
And it, it really came from brain research.
And what he did was, he thought about, well,
when students learn concepts in any area, the connection
between those concepts helped them in terms
of creation of new knowledge.
Without relationship between concepts, understanding,
and creation of new knowledge is actually not possible.
Okay. It's all about words and connected to a,
words that have ideas behind them and then creation
of thinking and creation of understanding
and reasoning then leads to creation of new knowledge.
Concept map, there are so many definitions of it,
but the 1 that I chose, which is, I think,
simple is graphical tools for organizing
and presenting information or knowledge.
That's really what it is.
This is, you know, a picture of, you know, a human brain.
The whole thing begins from here.
And it's, it's more of.
So what, what are we seeing?
What are we thinking about?
What is the connection between them?
If students cannot do that, then they cannot learn.
If they cannot learn, then they can't really create knowledge.
Okay. Which is what we want them to do.
We want them to be able to not just get the facts but go
to the next level where they can actually use the facts,
apply at facts, think critically, think analytically,
synthesize, evaluate, compare and contrast.
In our brains we have neurons that do help.
They actually play a very important part as far as,
as far as movement of information is concerned
and connection of ideas is concerned.
And this is, we do this, you know, from the,
the time that we're, you know,
little kids until, until we are old.
Actually when messages are passed, information is passed
within the brain and understanding is taking place,
reasoning is taking place.
There is actually physical, physical movement
or physical contact between the neurons
for that whole process to take place.
Aristotle once said that without images,
thinking is just not possible.
So if we cannot.
And, and as you can see, everything is about connecting
and connection and connecting and connections.
So, without really anything that backs our thinking,
anything that backs our concept, anything that backs our words,
it's not easy to, to think.
You know, if you actually think about it,
then it's, you know it's, it's.
It's impossible to think about anything without having,
without relating it to some kind of an image.
Seeing the world is mapping the world.
Evidence of what learning is all about and making the world,
you know, making learning a visible, visible experience.
I think a picture does increase recollection of up to 65%.
Research by Medina confirmed that.
And just to, you know, give you more information about this in.
In about 1967, there's a professor,
I think out of North Carolina, that gave his students,
showed his students 612 pictures, you know, images.
And right after the class, he kind of showed the pictures
on the wall and asked how many of them they could, you know,
how many of the pictures they could remember.
And, on average, students could remember
at least 97% of those pictures.
Three days after, he did exactly the same exercise.
What they could remember actually went down to 75.
And then after 30 days, it went down to 58 which means,
you can look at something.
But, then, without making connections,
the collection just reduces.
Just to give an example from geography,
if I was teaching a course about geography focusing or beginning
with the 5 themes of geography, which are location, place,
movement, human interaction, and region.
See, I could just list them like that.
And talk about them.
But this provides a lot more information,
will let students retain a lot more.
It captures a lot, as far as, the whole teaching
and learning process is concerned
and retention is higher with this.
This concept map of the concept map was developed by Novak
as a way to, you know, help educate us
to see the rationale behind helping students
to connect different concepts and different ideas
within different disciplines.
And as you can see, really, it, it shows.
I just. I just want to explain the different areas
or the different, what makes up a concept map.
Anything in yellow are more of, those are concepts.
So hierarchy, knowledge or understanding,
concept, those are concepts.
Then we have words that connect them, and those are links.
So for a concept map to be concept map, really,
what is required are 2 concepts that, in a way,
make up a proposition and, then, a link between them
that tells you how that are connected.
Now, as you can see, this makes a lot of sense
that concept maps, actually,
it defines it displaced concepts connected with linking words.
Concept maps presents knowledge and understanding,
has hierarchy, or has a structure.
Knowledge and understanding is constructed
with prior knowledge, new information.
So as you can see, that, you know,
everything is well connected, is well connected.
Can you imagine having something like this
for the course you'll be teaching for Monday
and the impact that this is going to have as far
as your students' ability to connect concepts
in your courses concerned?
It can be a powerful tool.
Now, let's look at some of the advantages of concept mapping.
No. 1 is that students can be able to think critically,
because when you challenge them to connect ideas,
it force it's them to think habit how they are related.
Either how the 2 words are related
or the 2 concepts are related or how they're related
with a given, a given diagram or, or a picture.
It does reveal prior knowledge.
It does help a great deal in terms
of remembering what they've learned before.
And, as we all know, really, knowledge always starts
from the building blocks.
So it's like you start from what's students know.
Start from the know, you know, what they know, bringing them
to what they are actually not quite aware of.
With that, then, they're going to be able
to create new knowledge.
But if it doesn't start from what they know,
it's going to be all over the place.
Students are able to see
and really comprehend what's going on over time.
They can be able to identify misconceptions.
As far as teaching practice is concerned,
and I just want to, I just want to.
I want to pose this to you, if you think about your own class,
what do you think would be some
of the advantages of concept maps?
>> The, the thing that makes the concept map useful is the way
that in which it sketches relationships, right?
>> Yes, sir.
>> It's, a kind of like works like, in the same way
that you presenting a lecture presents a certain kind of cut
on the information that we choose to talk about.
Some things first and some things later.
You're simply organizing these things spatially.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be sort
of the definitive expert version of the concept map
that ends up being up there.
But if you think about the relationship between, okay,
how is it that a professional in my field organizes this set
of knowledge, ancillary or tertiary, compared to students
who maybe get a list and assumes
that all things are relatively equal in importance
because they're all interrelated.
I think the fact that you can draw out the relationship
between gives students a way of thinking about them
so that they're not 11 individual,
discreet elements but, rather, a series of concepts
where 1 meets the next, meets the next, meets the next.
>> So are you describing it as a path through the information
as opposed to the, the depiction
of actual relationships unique to the concepts?
>> Right
>> Concept maps are hierarchical by nature to depict processes.
So you begin from the big idea.
How is it connected to the other smaller idea?
Yes, sir?
>> Abstraction is probably the oldest tool human beings have.
When they first came up with abstraction,
that's when conscious thought emerged.
And it's been our most successful tool,
but the great thing
about abstraction is also the difficult thing about it.
You're taking something concrete
and you're creating an abstract model.
The human brain is full of mapping tools.
With these concept maps,
we're giving flesh to an abstract idea.
We're making it incarnate in a way that is almost concrete.
So you can look at it as an abstraction
and then map it generically on to other things
but understand that, in and of itself,
in the same way you could a concrete concept.
>> There is, there's not really a perfect concept map.
The idea is to, really helps to make the connection
that can help them, at the minimum,
to understand what's going on in a classroom and what's in it
for them in terms of acquisition of those learning outcomes
that you have or learning objectives
that you have in your syllabus.
It's always, you know, there's always continuation of, okay,
well, you know, this has.
I'm thinking about this differently.
You know, part of it could, could blossom
into something different or could be,
you know, be developed further.
So there can't really be anything like a perfect map.
Concept maps are not limited to just the use of words.
You could actually put pictures in place of those words
and then link, you know, use words to link them.
>> You can?
>> You can, yeah.
>> You note that image recognition
that helps with memory.
Another thing that is even more powerful to be sure
to sharpen memory is narrative.
And narrative recall is extraordinarily high.
And these concept maps, they're, they almost have a narrative
like structure in the way that you trace
through in a manner of syntax.
It's very interesting to.
It seems like that, in and of itself,
would enable greater recall than that of,
say, a list of concepts.
>> And I think what makes students improve their level
of understanding and grasp of the material, maybe,
than if they just read and crammed the words.
With pictures and connections they're able
to go a lot further than that.
So facilitation of learning and creation of knowledge,
frameworks, research evidence,
this is just additional research evidence
that are actually more connected to assessment, you know,
leading to better recall, improving critical thinking
or higher order thinking, a higher high order of learning,
promotes active learning.
And you can have concept maps really at the individual.
You can students do them at the individual level
or you can have them do it as a group.
You can have the entire class as a group.
You know, however, you really want them to do it.
And the purpose for which you, you actually have that activity,
you know, will define, will define how, how,
how you want to do it.
Here are some tools that can be used for this purpose,
Microsoft Word, which we'll use and has very,
very good structure for concept mapping.
Using the "Smart Art," you can easily create a good concept map
of any phenomenon.
Mindomo.com more than tends to, actually I think it's
up to 10 students, can work
on a single concept map at the same time.
So it's, it's pretty powerful.
It's free.
Popplet is another 1.
This uses images, images and words.
CMap is 1 of the most, most, mostly used as,
you know, concept map tools.
It also allows for various students or people
to actually use, use the same concept map or work
on the same concept map simultaneously.
VUE, this was designed out of Tufts,
Tufts University in Massachusetts.
And it's free of charge.
It's a really cool program, again, for concept mapping.
Bubbl is another 1.
Prezi is another 1 free of charge.
How many of you have heard of mind mapping?
Okay. Do you know the, you know, what's the difference
between the 2, mind mapping, concept mapping?
>> The linking.
>> The linking.
What's after the linking?
>> Well, in the, in mind mapping, it's just kind
of showing you this things related,
this things related to this thing.
But in concept mapping those linking notes seem
really important.
>> So mind mapping does not have the notes.
It doesn't have the, the words that connect the 2 concepts,
the 2, yeah, the 2 concepts, okay,
while concept mapping actually does have that.
>> She was going to say there's more brainstorming than.
>> Right, right.
>> With or without the hierarchy
or prioritize more than anything.
>> That's, remember, in the beginning when I spoke
about the brain, brain research and that being the origin,
really, the origins from which Novak and his colleagues came
up with concept mapping?
Concept mapping has been, it's been there for quite a while
but only used in certain areas.
Nursing uses it a lot.
The colleges of medicine use it some, you know,
a lot because of the, because of what they do.
But it's actually applicable in any discipline.
>> Do you have any resources
for using concept maps quantifying your assessment
of concept maps?
So let's say that I wanted to do this as, like, a group activity
in class and then assign some points based
on the quality of their concept map?
>> Oh, uh huh.
>> So are there rubrics, like example rubrics
that we could see as to how we might be able to implement that?
>> There are rubrics available out there for concept mapping.
A rubric is basically a scoring criteria.
Okay. So in this case, it will be,
you've given students an assignment to come up with,
you know, concept maps, either at individual level,
group level, or the entire class.
And you want to measure or you want to find out the extent
to which their concept maps have met your expectations.
So to measure the quality of their concept maps.
So here you would have criteria and here you would have levels
of performance over here, where this case could be exemplary,
this could be good, this could be fair, and poor.
And then here you might have things that have
to do with, maybe, organization.
You may have things like notes, and you can have concepts.
And then, over here, your trying to explain what an excellent
or exemplary concept map is going to look at relative
to how the contents are organized, notes are organized,
you know, whether the notes make sense,
the links make sense, the concepts.
Are the concepts really related in a, you know, are they shown
in a way that are related?
Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Are there any questions?
[ Applause ]