Use in the classroom:
In digital circuits, it is often
difficult to motivate students why all those hoops we are going through to
optimize a circuit. The answer is simple yet complicated: The less number of
circuits we use to express a function, the less it costs to manufacture the
circuit. This is basically the ongoing idea of the entire semester for my
digital circuits class. I developed this concept map by using pretty much
resources I had created with some branching to show students concepts are
related to each other. Student can perhaps discuss the branches and put their
comments as groups.
The learning objective would be:
“To understand the underlying
concept of circuit optimization and apply this information to various designs
and functions.”
Students can individually browse
in the branches and comment as a group. Alternatively, connections between
branches can be removed and students can be asked to make the connections by
themselves and compare with their peers.
Clogger is very cool and easy to
use. I am assuming my engineering students will not have a particular problem
adopting this technology. As always, if they are asked to embed pictures or
videos, that is always challenging for them.
Collaboration is definitely
important. Students can jot down their own work but when they put those ideas
together, learning goes to another level. By encouraging creating
interconnections between concepts could prove useful for fostering
collaboration and team work.
Application:
Concept maps are inherently brief
and concise. That puts us on the coherence where all the fluff of information
is removed. Also, we are definitely segmenting the information by creating
branches and letting students contemplate on concepts one at a time.
Reflection:
I am not a big fan of big,
complicated concept maps. They seem overwhelming. However, creating these “mini”
concept maps can be quite helpful. I did not necessarily like adding pictures
or videos into the concept map. Not because it was difficult but I thought it
made them too complex for students. I do like putting links though. That way,
they have the option to dig further.
No comments:
Post a Comment