Using visual material in our teaching such as diagrams, graphs, and photographs can clarify the subject, inspire curiosity, and retain students’ attention. Research has shown that when used effectively, visuals along with speech and writing, allow different learners to engage with the topic and learn in a way that is most suitable for them (Morss and Murray 2005). Thus, in HE overhead slides and PowerPoint presentations have become pretty standard in most classrooms. Unfortunately, most lectures and tutorials in social science go as far as that in terms of integrating technology. While slides are helpful, they still leave students as receivers of the information curated by the teacher, presenting limited engagement opportunity. Since I started my teaching career, I have been trying to find different ways that enable learners to actively participate in the creation of visual materials for our classes.
Particularly, I found a collaborative mind-map making software (e.g. MindMeister) very helpful in my tutorials for the Economic Anthropology course, which I have been teaching (as a guest lecturer and tutor) for the last three years. My experience has been that the majority of students on this course (3rd-year honours) feel very anxious about it. Much of the theories presented are new to them and the lectures are designed in such a way that they draw from and build on previous ones. There are also a lot of new concepts and terminology that students find confusing and intimidating. I learned that dealing with their anxieties and expectations about the course early on, helps to create a better learning environment, alleviate their fears of failure, and understand the extent of support they will need throughout the semester. This also provides an opportunity to talk about how this course can be useful for their lives now and after HE, and for different career paths. However, because most find the course confusing and difficult, they struggle to participate in lectures and tutorials. Thus, I often found myself in a situation where students hastily took notes while I was explaining a given concept.
Drawing on this experience and after reviewing students’ course feedback from previous years, last semester I decided to incorporate collaborative mind-mapping into my tutorials’ design. The software allowed students to access the mind-map on their computers or mobile devices and add new content (e.g. keywords, summaries, pictures, videos). Since all lectures required a good understanding of key concepts covered in previous weeks, I suggested that we, as a group, make a large mind-map of the course and add relevant material before each tutorial. In class, I displayed it on the large screen so that students could see the links between various topics, use it as a starting point for our discussions, and continue to add new content. I kept the timeframe for editing open to allow them to interact with it before, during, and even long after the lectures and tutorials. This allowed students to choose to participate whenever they were able and still contribute to the groups’ overall learning experience (see Hedberg and Stevenson 2014). At the end of the semester, many said that the mind-map had been very helpful, especially when revising for the exam. A few expressed that being able to interact with the material in another way and to see the links on the screen helped them understand the theories and retain than knowledge.
References
Hedberg, J.G. & M. Stevenson (2014). ‘Breaking Away from Text, Time and Place’. Pp. 17-33 in M. Gosper and D. Ifenthaler (eds.) Curriculum Models for the 21st Century: Using Learning Technologies in Higher Education. New York: Springer.
Morss, K. & R. Murray (2005). Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers (chapters 1-2-3). London: Sage Publications.
Inna Yaneva-Toraman 