concept mapping – article in indian journal

I have been always thinking to publish our research work for an Indian audience. Atleast in India, the community of educationists, teachers, etc., get to know what we are working on. With this objective, I had
submitted some preliminary findings of my Ph.D. work to an Indian Journal. The following research paper has been published in the Indian Educational Review (a journal published by NCERT).

Kharatmal M. (2009): Concept Mapping for Eliciting Students’ Understanding of Science. Indian Educational
Review. 45(2), pp.31-43.

The article is on display in our library. I have also uploaded the article which can be downloaded from the publications page of my blog

visit to somaiya college for depmap workshop

Today I planned a visit to K.J.Somaiya college of science, vidyavihar with regard to plan for organizing depmap workshop for teachers. I met the faculty from physics, chemistry, biology, botany, microbiology, education departments of junior as well as senior college.

I explained about the objectives of the depmap workshop and since it is to build a teaching sequence, it would be useful if teachers themselves create their dependency maps using the web based portal in the hands-on workshop to be conducted in gnowledge lab, hbcse.  Teacher have got a fair understanding as I also showed them some featured maps picked out from the portal.

Overall, all the teachers whom i met are interested to participate in the depmap workshop. Teachers from each department will be participating in the workshop in april, may, june.

Initially the visit was planned for about an hour, but my visit got extended for more than 2 hours. Actually I have studied for H.S.C., B.Sc. & M.Sc. from Somaiya college. When i was meeting the teachers, i too got nostalgic and to my surprise, most of the teachers could remember me as their student. So my visit got extended as I met my teachers in the corridor, labs, and was talking about my work and research. A few teachers also were keen to know about my Ph.D. work in the area of biology education. My teachers were glad to know about my progress, i being an alumni of somaiya.

I was thrilled to go back to my college, to my teachers and convey my contribution to science education.

depmap on activity—who got the food

i was mapping the topic who got the food from chapter 4- looking at
animals from the small science curriculum for class III. and this is
the route that i followed to map.

depmap on food eating habits

an interesting depmap to build a thread as :
inorder to understand the concept of animals, one need to first
observe some animals, their food eating habits. the latter can be
understood in the context of an activity. once these activities are
performed one can categorize and classify which animals eat what kind
of food and then may be understand the concept of a dog, cat, and then progressively the concept of an animal.

Small Science Curriculum is an activity based curriculum developed by
HBCSE. It focusses on teaching science through activities.

“what the learner already knows” & depmap

I have been reading Ausubel’s classroom assimilation theory (1978) from time to time as his theory has form the basis of the prevailing science education research especially in the area of concept maps.

Ausubel’s principle, “what the learner already knows” means that students come to the classroom with a prior understanding of science through their everyday experience, commom sense knowledge, etc. He further goes ahead and suggests that we as science educators need to ascertain this fact first and “teach the learner accordingly”.

Now that we are creating a network of pre-requisite concepts or a dependency network for a teaching sequence, we are claiming that there are certain concepts which the learner should understand first and then progressively learn the further depending concepts.

I am just trying to make connections with the depmap work and Ausubel’s principle.

People are welcome to create dependency network (depmap) atwww.gnowledge.org.

One can view some featured maps. A few sample of depmaps from physics, chemistry and biology are featured for providing a glimpse of the depmaps.

focus group meeting

During the episteme3, our presentations on Refined Concept Maps, gnowledge.org generated interest among few participants. A focus group meeting for more interaction, collaboration was planned after today’s lunch. The members included Dr. Vrunda Prabhu, Dr. Brian, Prof. H.C.Pradhan, Dr. Nagarjuna, Ms. Meena. The group from City University, New York have  a repository of concept maps on mathematics based on their research work, students’ essays, etc. Prof. Pradhan shared his research on concept maps on physics and ways to analyze the concepts based on the links, distance. Our research group (Nagarjuna and Meena) shared our  research work on refined concept maps on biology  domain, and how the gnowledge.org can help build a  roadmap of knowledge from any given domain. The group also discussed on how to use the cognitive distance, semantic proximity for analyzing the concepts in a network.

This seems a useful outcome of the episteme-3 conference for our research group. Let us see how it proceeds.

episteme-3

Our research study on Refined Concept Maps for Science Education: A Feasibility Study got presented today in the Episteme-3 conference in HBCSE, Mumbai, India. The main highlights of the paper presentation have been on demonstrating the students’ ease of using the refined concept maps i.e. to apply a minimal set of relation names (linking words), without any loss of knowledge. The RCM method was compared with other two methods: description and traditional concept maps. We applied ANOVA and T-Test for statistical analysis. The study indicated an increase in the number of correct relations for the domain of nucleus and mitochondria. The relation names served as facilitator or an anchoring device for representing knowledge.

Episteme 3 is part of Episteme series of biennial conferences that is organized by HBCSE.

conceptual dependency map

As part of the Structure and Dynamics of Knowledge project, our lab at HBCSE has developed  a web-based community portal for creating a repository of conceptual dependencies or pre-requisites that are required for creating a learning path in science education. A node is mapped with another node using the depends-on and required-for relations. These maps would aid in understanding how to create a sequence for teaching a particular topic.

One can join and create depmap at http://www.gnowledge.org and can also subscribe to the community mailing list.

concept maps on evolution by the BASE teachers

On Saturday 27, 2008 at Nehru Science Centre, a symposium on Evolution Since Darwin was organized by the BASE (Bombay Association for Science Education). The events organized by BASE are attended and conducted by teachers and educationists from Mumbai. This particular event was scheduled on account of 150 years of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The organizers gave me an opportunity to conduct a concept mapping workshop in two consecutive sessions. In the first session, I did a presentation on concept maps for science education, and the second session was a hands-on session wherein the teachers (in groups) constructed concept maps on the topics of evolution—adaptation, natural selection, speciation, origin of species—from Ernst Mayr’s book on What Evolution is. The teachers really did a good job in constructing the maps. I am going to analyze the maps later and comment on them. Overall the teachers were impressed by the concept mapping technique and I was really happy to know that they were eager to use it in their classrooms.

Later in the afternoon, I was involved in the panel discussion. We were to comment on teachers’ ideas and their concept maps. Lots of issues came along during the discussion, which made us realize that the topic of evolution is not so easy to understand.

CMC2008

Hmm. While i am writing this post, our paper on Exploring the roots of rigor is being presented in the CMC2008 conference at Tallinn and Helsinki. I am not physically attending the conference. But I am doing the best I can do by sitting in my office here in Mumbai, India. Since the time the detailed program was announced, I have been going through the papers which might be of my interest and relevant to my research work. I am interacting with those researchers and informing them to attend our session on thursday. Even before the conference began, I have been already getting emails from researchers and our discussions have begun. Some are keen to continue the discussion after the conference, as they are busy in this conference week. That is really a good sign and a good outcome of the conference.

Hmm so I am virtually in the conference

we are being cited

I feel glad to know that our research work in the area of refined concept maps for science education is being cited in conference paper. Even the discussion on my blog post has been discussed in the paper.

Good to know