All 2 entries tagged Teaching Techniques

Research Techniques: making historical timelines

The requirements are:

1. plot lots of historical events visually on a line;
2. allow different types of event to be categorised, for example, publishing events, political events;
3. allow for some interactivity, with the user being able to show or hide categories of events;
4. allow events to be linked to other web pages containing more detail;
5. allow icons on events;
6. can be embedded in a web page.

One solution would be to create a Flash application for this. We might persue that for current timelines (as in ones of current events), as we can get the data from a Newsbuilder calendar. But for historical events, I tried something else – using MindManager. Here's the result of plotting some events from the 16th century:

This could meet all of the above requirements, including icons, links and categorisation. It also allows for filtering of events, for example if I apply a filter that only shows publishing events:

Adding the timeline to a web page is not quite as straightforward as it should be. But the creation and editing of the timelines is made very easy.

Robert O'Toole : 24 Nov 2005 15:27 |  Tags: Concept Maps E-Learning Teaching Techniques Warwick University |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Teaching Techniques: concept maps developing critical and investigative skills in presentations

Follow-up to Session Report: Introduction to concept mapping for PhD and staff from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

I just overheard a discussion that some undergraduates were having. They were planning a seminar presentation. The discussion seemed to consist of:

1. guessing what topics the tutor would expect them to cover;
2. analysing the available information (text books) to identify which of the topics they could cover;
3. identifying facts for some of the topics that would justify their claims to coverage.

If this were the sole scope of the resulting presentation, they would certainly not justify a claim to honours degree level performance, or even undergraduate certificate performance (see the QQA descriptors for details of what that means). But I guess (hope) that this actually represents just the first stage of the process, in which the students assure themselves of some self-confidence in the subject domain by getting a sense that they have at least a minimal degree of coverage. However, I have observed many undergraduate seminars in which the students have come prepared only with a check-list of facts, and the tutor has subsequently had to drag investigative and critical thought out of them.

Note that my argument is not that this kind of activity is wrong for undergraduates, but rather that it only represents a small aspect of what they should be doing. And more significantly, it is the aspect of the process that they focus upon. My guess is that this is the case because it gives them confidence in preparation for the presentation. A check-list of topics and facts is simply more tangible and less subject to challenge than "a critical and investigative processes".

This is where I think technology can make a significant contribution. If we could identify ways of making the critical and investigative process more concrete, more controlled for the student in the presentation, then we might be able to give them more confidence. Of course they may still lack confidence in the arguments that they produce, but we should expect that a more concrete representation of the arguments (in relation to the underlying knowledge base) has the benefit of making it easy to rehearse the investigative and critical discourse.

And that is exactly what is offered by some of the concept mapping techniques that I described.

A concept map is a simple and efficient way of recording facts and ideas. Each node in a map refers to a fact or idea, which may be documented elsewhere (to which the node can be linked), or which may exist in the memory of the map author[s]. Nodes are linked and arranged in some kind of order. This order may represent an assumed order of things in the world, or it may represent the order in which they can be investigated and understood (philosophically these amount to the same thing). Thus in creating and using a concept map, critical and investigative issues are automatically raised. Of course it is still possible to naively build a map as a simple check-list. However, in transferring from the map (non-sequential) to a presentation (sequential to a great extent), questions are raised:

• where do I start?
• does the audience need a high level overview?
• does the audience need to connect with their own detailed and specific perspective?
• what path do I follow?
• which nodes are most important?
• what are the possible links?
• where are the gaps?
• what detail is required?
• at what points should I consider making the path contingent?
• how will I modify the map as it is used?

The available technologies, such as the FreeMind and MindManager applications, have features that support and indeed encourage this behaviour. There are also well developed presentation and writing techniques that take advantage of these features to create presentations that are both investigative/critical and to a great extent predictable and confident.

I'm going to investigate this further, and am looking for opportunities to use these techniques with students.

Any volunteers? If so then contact me

Robert O'Toole : 11 Nov 2005 11:24 |  Tags: Concept Maps Concepts E-Learning Teaching Techniques Warwick University |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem