Teaching Techniques Used in the TAMU APPEAL Courses
| Concept Mapping |
Motivation:
- Implements a graphic organizer to establish the conceptual interconnectedness
of the main subjects.
- Increases student participation and yields a variety of engaged student-teacher discourse, providing ample opportunity to assess student understanding.
- Acts as a unifying feature, enabling us to adapt the Paradigms to a traditional
course structure while staying true to the Paradigms ideology of interconnected
contents.
- Allows students to explore and develop a deeper understanding of underlying connections between principles, adding cohesion to seemingly individual units of study.
- Can assess where connections werent being made, allowing to reinforce these
connections in class and tailor our curriculum to specifically address
common misconceptions.
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Methodology:
- Used as a form of review before exams, we asked students to demonstrate
their knowledge via concept maps.
- These maps were generated in collaborative groups and then compiled to form a collective classroom map investigating the relationship between specific physics principles.
Effective Usage:
- It was useful to give subtopics to each group or double up the topics among
two groups. Once each group finishes their map they are asked to combine
them on the board.
- Having several concept maps placed around the room, it is useful to ask
students to make connections between the seemingly unrelated concept maps.
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Texas A&M University Physics Department
College Station, TX 77843-4242 | (979) 845-7717 | Fax
(979) 845-2590