An official website of the United States government
Concept maps have emerged as a valid and reliable method for assessing deep conceptual understanding in engineering education within disciplines as well as interdisciplinary knowledge integration across disciplines. Most work on concept maps, however, focuses on undergraduates. In this paper, we use concept maps to examine changes in graduate students’ conceptual understanding and knowledge integration resulting from an interdisciplinary graduate program. Our study context is pair of foundational, team-taught courses in an interdisciplinary Disaster Resilience and Risk Management (DRRM) graduate program. The courses include a 3-hour research course and a 1-hour seminar that aim to build student understanding within and across Urban Affairs and Planning, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geosciences, and Business Information Technology. The courses introduce core principles of DRRM and relevant research methods in these disciplines, and drive students to understand the intersections of these disciplines in the context of planning for and responding to natural and human-made disasters. To understand graduate student growth from disciplinary-based to interdisciplinary scholars, we pose the research questions: 1) In what ways do graduate students’ understandings of DRRM change as a result of their introduction to an interdisciplinary graduate research program? and 2) To what extent and in what ways do concept maps serve as a tool to capture interdisciplinary learning in this context? Data includes pre/post concept maps centered on disaster resilience and risk management, a one-page explanation of the post-concept map, and ethnographic field notes gathered from class and faculty meetings. Pre-concept maps were collected on the first day of class; post-concept maps will be collected as part of the final course assignment. We assess the students’ concept maps for depth of conceptual understanding within disciplines and interdisciplinary competency across disciplines, using the field notes to provide explanatory context. The results presented in this paper support the inclusion of an explanation component to concept maps, and also suggest that concept maps alone may not be the best measure of student understanding of concepts within and across disciplines in this specific context. If similar programs wish to use concept maps as an assessment method, we suggest the inclusion of an explanation component and suggest providing explicit instructions that specify the intended audience. We also suggest using a holistic scoring method, as it is more likely to capture nuances in the concept maps than traditional scoring methods, which focus solely on counting factors like hierarchies and number of cross-links.
more »
« less
A qualitative analysis of concept maps through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs.
Learning physics in any context, including undergraduate research experiences (UREs), requires learning its concepts and the relational structure between those new concepts with what students already know. We use concept maps, a knowledge elicitation method, for assessing mentees' and mentors' knowledge structures during Research Experience for Undergraduates programs. The study looked at maps from seven mentor-mentee pairs to understand how mentors and mentees use specific knowledge and strategies during the development of their concept maps. A qualitative analysis of the maps showed mentors and mentees differed in their ways of organizing and displaying their knowledge in terms of structure, scale, language, and use of conceptual and procedural knowledge. For instance, mentees used more procedural knowledge. It is perhaps due to their perception of finishing their REU projects and the fact that they may have only limited and superficial knowledge of specific topics. However, mentors' maps were smaller but more significant in using more comprehensive conceptual knowledge and connecting their maps to the broader scientific context.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1846321
- PAR ID:
- 10409050
- Editor(s):
- Frank, Brian W.; Jones, Dyan L.; Ryan, Qing X.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physics Education Research Conference 2022
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 525 to 530
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract When, how, and why students use conceptual knowledge during math problem solving is not well understood. We propose that when solving routine problems, students are more likely to recruit conceptual knowledge if their procedural knowledge is weak than if it is strong, and that in this context, metacognitive processes, specifically feelings of doubt, mediate interactions between procedural and conceptual knowledge. To test these hypotheses, in two studies (Ns = 64 and 138), university students solved fraction and decimal arithmetic problems while thinking aloud; verbal protocols and written work were coded for overt uses of conceptual knowledge and displays of doubt. Consistent with the hypotheses, use of conceptual knowledge during calculation was not significantly positively associated with accuracy, but was positively associated with displays of doubt, which were negatively associated with accuracy. In Study 1, participants also explained solutions to rational arithmetic problems; using conceptual knowledge in this context was positively correlated with calculation accuracy, but only among participants who did not use conceptual knowledge during calculation, suggesting that the correlation did not reflect “online” effects of using conceptual knowledge. In Study 2, participants also completed a nonroutine problem‐solving task; displays of doubt on this task were positively associated with accuracy, suggesting that metacognitive processes play different roles when solving routine and nonroutine problems. We discuss implications of the results regarding interactions between procedural knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and metacognitive processes in math problem solving.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems.more » « less
-
Braun, Derek (Ed.)Maintaining your research team’s productivity during the COVID-19 era can be a challenge. Developing new strategies to mentor your research trainees in remote work environments will not only support research productivity and progress toward degree, but also help to keep your mentees’ academic and research careers on track. We describe a three-step process grounded in reflective practice that research mentors and mentees can use together to reassess, realign, and reimagine their mentoring relationships to enhance their effectiveness, both in the current circumstances and for the future. Drawing on evidence-based approaches, a series of questions for mentees around documented mentoring competencies provide structure for remote mentoring plans. Special consideration is given to how these plans must address the psychosocial needs and diverse backgrounds of mentors and mentees in the unique conditions that require remote interactions.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2022.pr.Zohrabi_Alaee
