Adaptations of Concept Mapping For Technological Literacy Courses

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2011

Publication Source

Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Austin, TX

Publisher

American Society for Engineering Education

Comments

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation under award: DUE-0633277 and DUE-0920164. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Gratitude is expressed to Jonathan Herrman and Joshua Wunderlich for contributions of material.

This paper relates to the poster, also entitled "Adaptations of Concept Mapping for Technological Literacy Courses", which is part of the collection of the 11th Annual Celebration for Undergraduate Research and Creative Performance (2012). Information about the poster can be found here: http://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_11/10/

Abstract

Assessment of student learning is a challenging issue in courses onEngineering and technology for non-engineers. Equally challenging is finding effective methods to communicate central features of technological systems to a diverse student audience with limited background knowledge. Methods of assessment are needed that extend beyond questions that can be answered by memorization but do not require extensive prerequisite mathematical knowledge.Communication or explanation of how technical systems work requires a method that can represent a diverse range of technological products but that non-engineers can learn to use in a limited amount of time. The technique of concept mapping has been adapted to this purpose. Concept mapping provides a visual method of demonstrating the relationships that exist between the component parts of a larger body of information. Such a feature is well-suited for explaining technical systems. In one application concept mapping is combined with aspects of theEngineering design technique of functional analysis or functional decomposition to create a method that non-engineers can use to describe or explain how a technical system works. Another application is reported that illustrates how concept maps can be used to help nonengineering students transfer understanding of underlying principles from one technical system to another.

Keywords

Student Learning, Engineering, Technology, Literacy Courses

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