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CONCEPT-MAPPING ACTIVITIES TO ASSESS STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING OF NEW KNOWLEDGE

This study explores how constructivist teaching and Concept Mapping helped my students learning. A crucial aspect of my teaching work was observing my students during their work in order to understand how they construct their Concept Maps which showed me how they learn. During my lectures I introduced new concepts regarding my subject called Information and Knowledge Strategy. While learning the new elements of knowledge, the students were expected to perform searches on the internet. The browsing behavior differed from student to student. As a result of personalized filters the students’ past interests determined what they found. So using the same keywords, they ended up on difference websites. I focused on the students’ ability of finding and validating new knowledge on internet. Drawing Concept Maps students developed into more responsible selfdirected learners. Every student was making different connections between topics, so their explanations of taxonomies reflected their own knowledge. I could observe how the main concepts of my subject were picked up by my students meanwhile they were drawing their own Maps. This activity was a highly challenging work both for my students as well as for me. 1 Background Knowledge The content of our thoughts is altered by internet. As a teacher I will face new challenges in the 21st century which are shown by the most significant thinkers (www.thinkers50.com). I am trying to contextualize them and attempt to respond to them. What can the students do with the unlimited information at their fingertips? On the one hand we have too much information, namely information overload. On the other hand information underload (Gates, 2006). The students and also the teachers increasingly overwhelmed by information, but we have no tools to validate them effectively. Solving the problem of the information underload is a challenge for the Knowledge Workers. According to Anderson (2006:125) on that market everything is measured by the reputation. A culture of idea-spreading is another challenge for Knowledge Workers. TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading (www.ted.com). These considerations guide my choice of sources as well as content for my teaching material; resulting in not only using the newest significant ideas of high complexity but also enabling my students to pursue their own interest in relation to the class. In November 2003 when I participated in the 2 IASTED International Conference in Scottsdale Arizona I meet John W. Coffey. The benefit of knowledge representation was well known to me, my presentation (Velencei, 2003) in Scottsdale was focused on our Expert System which is based on symbolic knowledge representation. I was highly impressed by Coffey’s presentation. In no more than a year I started to use this tool in business coaching. As we described it in our paper (Baracskai, Dörfler, Velencei, 2008) Concept Maps and Expert Systems are both in the soft toolbar of knowledge modeling. In that paper we presented the ideas elaborated in the form of a Conceptual Model and we also mentioned few additional ideas as our plans for future research. We combined different kinds of Concept Maps and our Expert System in order to map organizational knowledge. 2 My Teaching Approach This paper is not intended to present constructivist pedagogy only I note strongly how this approach can support my teaching work. Knowledge is constructed and not merely reproduced. This construction is personal and individualistic. (Dörfler, 2010) When students encounter new knowledge, they relate it to their previous knowledge. They are constantly doing something to the new knowledge and what they already know and in the process create of their own knowledge. According to the constructivist pedagogy knowledge cannot be imposed or transferred intact from the mind of the knower to the mind of another. Even if I teach very well, students may not learn unless they have constructed their own knowledge. By reflecting on students’ experiences, they construct their own understanding of the world they live in. Information and Knowledge Strategy demonstrate an innovative, new subject in our University. The main concepts of this subject are accept the necessity of Knowledge and Information Sharing, describe the era of abundance, understand the Freeconomics, identify the Most Powerful Thinkers and contextualize the new elements of Knowledge. 2.1 Flow can be achieved Concept Mapping activity does not exclusively imply the "draining" of students’ knowledge, but organizing it and often enriching it. What is required for students to take organizing their knowledge as a thrill? Based on Csíkszentmihalyi's (1990) idea we (Baracskai, Velencei, 2002) showed the states of a Decision Making expert during co-work. I discovered some similarity between knowledge elicitation of experts and students in a state of Flow.