A Modest Concept Map of my Online Stats Course
It is timely that I should be doing this exercise to map our my course. In fact, I recently started to create a concept map for the purpose of seeing just how complex (if not merely complicated) my course was in terms of the various digital connections that underlie the organization of my course. As you will see, this a view of my course (at the macro level) that shows the various cluster or chunks of content, broken down by purpose. Within various clusters, one can see nested content and, in some cases, nested content within nested content. The concept map does not shown everything, e.g., only one Learning Module is *represented*, conceptually, but 11 other Learning Modules are implied and are, mostly, very similar to the Learning Module shown here.
By way of a related note, I also use concept maps in my stats class; each week or Learning Module involves students, either singularly or in small groups, to re-construct and re-present the key threshold concept and ideas. This has been done through the use of flip charts and post-it notes or through Mindomo. Their concept maps, over time, become increasingly beautiful pieces of ideas put together in complex networks of coherent topics. It is always a pleasure to see them engaging in this activity that reveals a great deal of learning, cooperating, debating, questioning, and sharing what the know.
In the end, there is always someone who ends up saying how they can see how each of the chapters and clusters of ideas connect to one another better than they had previously imagined. In fact, its the conceptual connections that my students (and the literature on statistical pedagogy) says is a big barrier to learning; I think I knew this from the start and recognized that concept maps would potentially be a great way to forge more literal and figurative connections…in my students’ concept maps, between my students, and with the discipline and the world.
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