CONCEPT MAPPER
Design Sketch for WISE 3.0 system, 07.16.07
OVERVIEW
Concept Mapper is a powerful new Step Type designed to complement the WISE 3.0 system in 2008. This learning tool allows students to quickly and intuitively create graphical concept maps that visually integrate their ideas and knowledge. Students receive feedback about these concept maps in a variety of ways and have the opportunity to revise and improve their work. The Concept Map tool will have very broad applicability, being of potential use to the majority of existing WISE projects as well as future projects. This new Step Type will enhance the learning value of the WISE system, yield additional formative assessment information for the teacher, and offer a new type of engaging interactivity for the student.
1. SELECT MAP TYPE
Teacher (or original author of the project) starts by deciding on the type of Concept Map they want students to experience. 4 choices are: Free-Form, Skeleton-Fill, Auto-Grade, and Peer-Grade.
2. FREE-FORM (teacher graded)
SUMMARY: This map provides maximum knowledge-integration challenge for student (freely connecting their ideas into a visual pattern) but also requires maximum amount of teacher evaluation time.
- Teacher does not create a pre-made concept map.
- Student creates a free-form concept map using the intuitive drawing tools.
- Student saves their map and clicks SUBMIT to send the map to their teacher for review.
- Teacher reviews the map and can assign a grade/score (quantitative or qualitative). Teacher can also opt to write commentary about the map and can select a checkbox requiring the students to create a second draft of the map.
- If Teacher required a revision, the student reviews the teacher's feedback, revises their map again, and submits this second draft for a final grade/score.
3. SKELETON-FILL (auto graded)
SUMMARY: This map has less KI value, but offers fully automated grading. It is ideal as a warm-up concept mapping challenge early in a project.
- Teacher creates a concept map with unlimited number of Terms and Links. Links can be unidirectional or bidirectional.
- Teacher then specifies what elements will "blank out" -- meaning they will presented as blanks which the student must fill by dragging and dropping text objects. The teacher can specify a percentage of the Terms and a percentage of the Links they would like to go blank. For example, if Author specifies 50/50, then 50% of the terms will be blank and 50% of the links will be blank. If author specifies 100/0, then 100% of the Terms are blanked while 0% of the links are blanked.
- The teacher can also specify some distractor terms to test the student's level of understanding.
- Student sees a skeleton of the teacher's concept map. A skeleton of blanks boxes for all terms/links is in place, and some of the Terms/Links are already displayed within the skeleton (depending on the percentages selected by the teacher). All of the unresolved Terms/Links appear in a "sandbox" to the side.
- The student drags and drops Terms/Links from the sandbox out into the empty blanks in the skeleton. Student also tries to ignore any distractor items in the Sandbox. Once the student has placed all the Terms/Links they press a "Score It" button. Any incorrect items are bounced back to the sandbox and the students gets a score for the correct items. The student can take up to three chances to revise their work. They get the highest score out of three tries.
- The system stores each iteration of the student's map (for researcher purposes). The student gets the best of their three submitted scores. The map associated with the student's highest score is the one saved to the "Show All Work" area.
- Adaptation Features: in a future version, this tool could also automatically scale the % of Terms/Links blanked out based on individual student abilities. Students could also get differing number of chances for making revisions.
4. AUTO-GRADE (auto graded)
SUMMARY: This map provides strong KI value though somewhat less than a free-form map. However, fully-automated grading and self-driven review/revise functionality offers the student immediate and engaging feedback about the normative accuracy of their concept map (relative to the teacher's "ideal" map).
- Teacher creates a concept map with unlimited number of Terms and Links.
- Student see a blank work area, with all the Terms/Links specified by the teacher placed in the Sandbox. Note that there is no skeleton of the concept map here — the student must create the structure themselves.
- Students uses the Terms/Links to build a map.
- When student is satisfied with their map, they click the "Score It" button. The system analyzes the student map and marks any problemmatic terms/links with a red exclamation point icon.
- The student clicks on each Exclamation icon to see a pop-up describing the problem.
- The student revises their map based on this feedback, then gets one final chance to Score their map. The students gets the higher of their two scores.
5. PEER-GRADE (peer graded, then teacher graded)
SUMMARY: This map provides strong KI value and allows both peer and teacher involvement in the evaluation/feedback process. This map style boosts student motivation because it incorporates social aspects of the secondary school learning dynamic (students value and enjoy getting/giving feedback to their peers, if done in a safe/anonymous way).
- Teacher creates a concept map with unlimited number of Terms and Links. Author also states how many points students get for peer-reviewing another student's work.
- Matt (student) sees a blank work area, with all the Terms/Links specified by the teacher placed in the Sandbox. Matt creates his map.
- Matt clicks a "Send Draft 1 to Another Student" button. Once at least 80% of the students have submitted a Draft 1, then system then sends each map anonymously to another student for review. Anonymity here is key. Example: Matt's map is sent to Tony labeled as "Step X Map by Student A"
- Tony reviews Matt's draft 1 map. Each term and link has a small blue Review icon on it. Tony clicks on each Review icon to show a pop-up menu containing a Checkmark icon or a Question mark icon. Tony selects one of these two icons (indicating he supports or doesn't understand the link).
- Tony can also type a short statement for any items marked with a question mark, specifying why they connection does not make sense to him.
- When Tony is done commenting on all of the Terms/Link he clicks "Send Feedback to Original Author" Note that Tony also get a nice confirmation screen thanking him for helping a peer, and informing him that he has received X points for this peer-review effort (amount specified earlier by Teacher).
- Matt receives his map back with the message "Your concept map from Step [X] has been reviewed by Student B. Click REVIEW to start your second draft."
- Matt then revises his Map. When done he clicks the "Send Draft 2 to Teacher"
- The teacher receives the 2nd draft concept maps and assigns final grades.
- The big draw for this type of Concept Map: 1) encourages students to assist one another 2) allows students to compare their ideas to those of classmates, but without risking embarrassment 3) boosts student motivation and offers a fun new kind of interactivity for students 4) lowers teacher grading burden as students help each other weed out simple mistakes in 1st drafts. Teacher can concentrate on helping students with higher order thinking about their maps.
CONCEPT MAP
A) Implement Free-Form an
IMPLMENTATION PLAN
A) Implement Free-Form and Self-Grade concept mapping functionality for Spring 2008.
B) Implement Skeleton-Fill and Peer-Grade functionality for Summer 2008.