Using student feedback to construct an assessment rubric for a concept map in physiology

Constructing quality assessment rubrics can be challenging, especially when they are used for integrated, group-centered, applied learning. We describe a collaborative assessment task in which groups of second-year dentistry students developed a complex concept map. In groups of four, the students were given a written, simulated, medical history of a patient and required to construct a concept map illustrating relevant pathophysiological concepts and pharmacological interventions. This report describes a research project aimed at making educational goals of the task more explicit through investigating student and faculty member understandings of the criteria that might be used to assess the concept map. Information was gathered about the perceptions of students in relation to the learning goals associated with the task. These were compared with faculty member perceptions. The findings were used to develop an assessment rubric intended to be more accessible to learners. The new rubric used the language of both faculty members and students to more clearly represent expectations of each criterion and standard. This assessment rubric will be used in 2005 for the next phase of the project.

Concept maps as a tool to analyze the ideas of teacher training students regarding what to teach on human nutrition in Primary Education

Concept maps are a technique used to obtain a visual representation of a person's ideas about a concept or a set of related concepts. Specifically, in this paper, through a qualitative methodology, we analyze the concept maps proposed by 52 groups of teacher training students in order to find out the characteristics of the maps and the degree of adequacy of the contents with regard to the teaching of human nutrition in the 3rd cycle of primary education. The participants were enrolled in the Teacher Training Degree majoring in Primary Education, and the data collection was carried out through a training activity under the theme of what to teach about Science in Primary School? The results show that the maps are a useful tool for working in teacher education as they allow organizing, synthesizing, and communicating what students know. Moreover, through this work, it has been possible to see that future teachers have acceptable skills for representing the concepts/ideas in a concept map, although the level of adequacy of concepts/ideas about human nutrition and its relations is usually medium or low. These results are a wake-up call for teacher training, both initial and ongoing, because they shows the inability to change priorities as far as the selection of content is concerned.

The potential contributions of concept maps for learning website to assessment for learning practices

The purpose of this paper is to examine the promising contributions of the Concept Maps for Learning (CMfL) website to assessment for learning practices. The CMfL website generates concept maps from relatedness degree of concepts pairs through the Pathfinder Scaling Algorithm. This website also confirms the established principles of effective assessment for learning, for it is capable of automatically assessing students' higher order knowledge, simultaneously identifying strengths and weaknesses, immediately providing useful feedback and being user-friendly. According to the default assessment plan, students first create concept maps on a particular subject and then they are given individualized visual feedback followed by associated instructional material (e.g., videos, website links, examples, problems, etc.) based on a comparison of their concept map and a subject matter expert's map. After studying the feedback and instructional material, teachers can monitor their students' progress by having them create revised concept maps. Therefore, we claim that the CMfL website may reduce the workload of teachers as well as provide immediate and delayed feedback on the weaknesses of students in different forms such as graphical and multimedia. For the following study, we will examine whether these promising contributions to assessment for learning are valid in a variety of subjects.

Exploring the mobile structural assessment tool: Concept maps for learning website: Concept Maps for Learning Website

In this paper, we describe how the pathfinder algorithm converts relatedness ratings of concept pairs to concept maps; we also present how this algorithm has been used to develop the Concept Maps for Learning website (www.conceptmapsforlearning.com) based on the principles of effective formative assessment. The pathfinder networks, one of the network representation tools, claim to help more students memorize and recall the relations between concepts than spatial representation tools (such as Multi- Dimensional Scaling). Therefore, the pathfinder networks have been used in various studies on knowledge structures, including identifying students’ misconceptions. To accomplish this, each student’s knowledge map and the expert knowledge map are compared via the pathfinder software, and the differences between these maps are highlighted. After misconceptions are identified, the pathfinder software fails to provide any feedback on these misconceptions. To overcome this weakness, we have been developing a mobile-based concept mapping tool providing visual, textual and remedial feedback (ex. videos, website links and applets) on the concept relations. This information is then placed on the expert concept map, but not on the student’s concept map. Additionally, students are asked to note what they understand from given feedback, and given the opportunity to revise their knowledge maps after receiving various types of feedback.

Biochemistry of the Envenomation Response-a Generator Theme for Interdisciplinary Integration

The understanding of complex physiological processes requires information from many different areas of knowledge. To meet this interdisciplinary scenario, the ability of integrating and articulating information is demanded. The difficulty of such approach arises because, more often than not, information is fragmented through under graduation education in Health Sciences. Shifting from a fragmentary and deep view of many topics to joining them horizontally in a global view is not a trivial task for teachers to implement. To attain that objective we proposed a course herein described Biochemistry of the envenomation response aimed at integrating previous contents of Health Sciences courses, following international recommendations of interdisciplinary model. The contents were organized by modules with increasing topic complexity. The full understanding of the envenoming pathophysiology of each module would be attained by the integration of knowledge from different disciplines. Active-learning strategy was employed focusing concept map drawing. Evaluation was obtained by a 30-item Likert-type survey answered by ninety students; 84% of the students considered that the number of relations that they were able to establish as seen by concept maps increased throughout the course. Similarly, 98% considered that both the theme and the strategy adopted in the course contributed to develop an interdisciplinary view.

iMap : um mecanismo de inferência para mapas conceituais

Mapas Conceituais são representações gráficas do conhecimento de uma pessoa num dado momento e área de conhecimento. Por sua natureza investigativa, são utilizados como ferramentas de apoio em abordagens pedagógicas que objetivam promover a aprendizagem significativa. No entanto, o processo de avaliação de um mapa tende a ser custoso pois acarreta uma pesada carga de processamento cognitivo por parte do avaliador, já que este precisa mapear os conceitos e relações em busca de nuances de conhecimento alí presentes. Essa pesquisa tem por objetivo aumentar o nível de abstração nas interações entre o avaliador e os mapas conceituais fornecendo uma camada intermediária de inteligência computacional que favoreça a comunicação por meio de perguntas e respostas em linguagem natural, fornecendo ao avaliador ferramentas que lhe permita examinar o conteúdo do mapa conceitual sem exigir deste o mapeamento visual dos conceitos e relações presentes nos mapas avaliados. Uma ferramenta é prototipada e uma prova de conceito apresentada. A análise da arquitetura proposta permitiu definir uma arquitetura final com características que permitem potencializar o uso de mapas conceituais e facilitar diversas operações pedagógicas com estes. Essa pesquisa situa-se na área de investigação de sistemas de perguntas e resposta, aplicando técnicas de processamento de linguagem natural para análise da pergunta e interpretação do mapa conceitual e aplica técnica de inteligência artificial para inferir respostas às perguntas.

Scientific production on workplace bullying/harassment in dissertations and theses in the Brazilian scenario

OBJECTIVE To analyze scientific production about workplace bullying and harassment in dissertations and theses in Brazil, with emphasis on the year of publication; educational institution; area of knowledge; professional and academic background of the authors; keywords used; and concept map organization. METHOD Bibliometric study with a quantitative approach with a sample consisting of 57 papers, 5 theses and 52 dissertations, published between 2002 and 2012. RESULTS It was found that 2012 was the year with the highest number of publications in this topic area. The region that stood out was the Southeast. The institution with the highest number of publications was the Federal University of Santa Catarina. There was a predominance of dissertations and most publications were produced by researchers focused on a multidisciplinary perspective. CONCLUSION Expanding the views regarding bullying in order to disseminate scientific production was proposed, promoting further advancement of debates and raising pertinent questions.

Murros projektikohtaisista ratkaisuista tuotteiden systemaattiseen kehittämiseen ja hallintaan

Tämä tutkimus käsittelee strategiamuutoksen toimeenpanoa projektiliiketoimintaympäristössä toimivan liiketoimintayksikön tuotekehitys-, suunnittelu- ja tuotetoimitusprosesseissa. Muutoksen tavoitteena on tuoterakenteiden ja toimitusprosessien hallinta pelkän resurssien hallinnan sijaan. Työn tavoitteena on kuvaus siitä, mitä muutoksia strategisten tavoitteiden saavuttaminen edellyttää liiketoimintayksikön tuoteprosessien, tuotearkkitehtuurin ja tietojärjestelmien osalta. Tutkimuksen teoriaosuus käsittelee teknologiastrategiaa, tuotetiedon hallintaa, tuotearkkitehtuureja sekä tuotekehitystoiminnan prosesseja ja menestystekijöitä. Tutkimuksen empiriaosuudessa peilataan liiketoimintayksikön nykytilaa ja strategisia tavoitteita esitettyyn teoreettiseen viitekehykseen, sekä suoritetaan analyysi tavoitellun muutoksen edellytyksistä. Työn tulos sisältää sarjan toimenpiteitä ja näistä muodostetun käsitekartan, joka kuvaa muutosprosessia kokonaisuutena: tuoterakenteiden, tuotetiedon hallinnan, prosessien ja organisaatioiden osalta.

Effets de la stratégie d'enseignement de carte conceptuelle de type hiérarchique sur la compréhension littérale et inférentielle de textes informatifs en langue seconde

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal