Scientia Education Experience: Being Digital
Concept and knowledge maps have the potential to improve student learning and understanding by promoting meaningful learning and critical thinking. However, providing manual feedback on students’ maps is not feasible for large classes. Accordingly, a user-friendly, valid and reliable, automated online tool for assessment
and feedback of students’ maps might have significant benefits for learning.
Knowledge Maps is an online mapping tool developed at UNSW and integrated with Moodle, which can be used to create, edit and share maps, as well as providing automated feedback on students’ inputs. Preliminary studies show that Knowledge Maps software is readily accepted by both students and educators. Results suggest that submitted knowledge maps provide a similar indication of students’ understanding of a topic as a modified essay question, with the advantage of instant, consistent automated grading.
Knowledge Maps software has potential benefits for learning in a variety of disciplines and might be a useful addition to the digital assessment repertoire in higher education.
This presentation aligns with the following UNSW Communities of Practice 'Student Feedback and Digital Assessment'. More information can be found here.
About Professor Gary Velan
Professor Gary Velan is an award-winning medical educator at UNSW. He is currently Senior Vice Dean (Education) in Medicine and Co-Director of the Scientia Education Academy. Gary’s innovations include the introduction of online formative assessments and myEducation Portfolio to UNSW, as well as the development of virtual microscopy adaptive tutorials and online knowledge maps. He is internationally recognised for research in medical education, focusing on eLearning, assessment and feedback.
You can access the recording via the Connections Moodle site (self-enrolment key: unswconnections)