Abstract
<p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Engineering education is facing a changing world in which how one thinks is becoming more important than what one thinks; that is, our course content is important but constantly changing and we need to help students learn how to think about that content.</span></p> <p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Today&rsquo;s students have grown accustomed to immediate rewards, multi-channel stimuli, and rapid-fire communications.&nbsp; As a result, they are often impatient and suffer a lack of focus. When reflection is called for in the learning process - a time consuming practice - students may find it difficult to overcome the conflict between their typically speedy management of priorities and the focused, time-intensive thinking required to acquire a strong foundation of declarative knowledge.</span></p> <p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Therefore, the exploration of tools to facilitate the formation of deep knowledge structures is essential. One instructional strategy that shows promise is the use of concept mapping, a learning activity that requires students to explain their understanding of important ideas and the relationships among those ideas.&nbsp; This paper describes a pilot project to integrate concept mapping into a Mechanical Engineering Course and the preliminary results of that project.</span></p> <p class="Abstract"><span lang="EN-US">This project has been established within the Working Group of &ldquo;Tools for Developing High Order Thinking Skills&rdquo;, of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education, in which the first author is the leader and the other two co-authors, are working group members</span><span lang="EN-US">.</span></p>
Highlights
As cognitive processing research advances our understanding of how learning occurs within the brain, educators can take this new knowledge and apply it to teaching
This paper describes a pilot project to integrate concept mapping into a Mechanical Engineering Course and the preliminary results of that project
Within the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education (SPEE), a workgroup for Higher Order Thinking Skills has several members working with concept mapping in their courses
Summary
As cognitive processing research advances our understanding of how learning occurs within the brain, educators can take this new knowledge and apply it to teaching. We know that our foundational learning involves acquiring basic concepts, deep understanding and higher order thinking rely on the relational links among those topics. There is ample research to suggest that engineering students do well memorizing large amounts of information, their ability to use that information for complex problem-solving, critical thinking, or creative activity remains limited [1]. The challenge is to introduce teaching strategies that move student cognition into these realms -- into the domains of higher order thinking skills. Within the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education (SPEE), a workgroup for Higher Order Thinking Skills has several members working with concept mapping in their courses. This paper discusses how concept maps can be used for instruction and describes a pilot project to integrate concept maps into a course within the Mechanical Engineering Integrated Master's Degree, the preliminary results of this activity, and recommendations based on these results
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